October 26, 2015
The NYT had a largely negative assessment of Abenomics, implying that it had done little to improve the state of Japan’s economy in the last two and a half years. The piece never mentions the surge in employment in Japan over this period. The overall employment rate for workers age 16-64 rose by 2.4 percentage points since the fourth quarter of 2012. This compares to a rise of 1.2 percentage points in the United States in a period in which the pace of job growth has been widely touted. If the United States had the same growth in employment rates as Japan under Abenomics, it would translate into another 2.4 million jobs.
Employment growth among women has been especially impressive, rising by 3.6 percentage points over this period. The employment rate for women is now a full percentage point higher than in the United States.
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