"Temp workers' jobs in peril, but ministry lacks clear picture", 18 May 2020

The coronavirus pandemic is expected to cause a huge wave of layoffs among temporary employees later this month, but the labor ministry appears oblivious to the plight of those most vulnerable in the workforce.

With the virus wreaking havoc on the economy, companies will likely cut costs by terminating the contracts of many nonregular workers. By the end of May, decisions on contract renewals are typically made in Japan.

...The labor ministry has not released such coronavirus-related data concerning temporary workers on its website, and it provided only oral answers to questions from The Asahi Shimbun.

The data obtained by the ministry does not differentiate between regular and nonregular workers nor does it show the number of temporary workers who are likely to lose or have already lost their jobs.

“We haven’t thought about obtaining a breakdown of the data,” said an official of the ministry’s employment policy department.

...According to the ministry’s labor force survey in March, a little over 70 percent of the 1.44 million temporary workers in Japan are on fixed-term contracts.

The largest proportion, at 390,000 workers, have contracts whose terms range from one to three months.

Most companies in Japan start executing the contracts of temporary employees in April and renew the contracts every three months to coincide with quarterly settlement of accounts.

...In November 2008, following the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, the labor ministry conducted a survey on the status of nonregular employees’ contracts. The results showed that around 30,000 people, including about 20,000 temporary workers, were expected to lose their jobs by March 2009 due to the global financial crisis.

In a survey conducted a month later, the figure jumped to about 85,000, including 57,000 temporary workers...