Tokyo – College graduates face the best job market in a decade, and wages are rising again. The lead stock market index has doubled in value in two years. Corporate profits are the highest in recent memory. And for the first time since 1990, land prices in Tokyo are up.
Could it be that Japan, long the sick man among major global economies, has finally recovered? This is, after all, the country where the words “gloom” and “malaise” have been used for so long that many Japanese came to view them as facts of life. Even the upturns proved to be short lived as Japan was unable to shake off the doldrums it fell into in the early 1990s, when its stock and real estate bubbles burst.
But this time, most economists and analysts agree, the recovery seems to be real, its roots extending through the Japanese economy.
After more than a decade of working off excessive debt, bloated payrolls and overbuilt factory capacity, Japan seems to have addressed its bubble-era problems and emerged leaner and more competitive, the economists say. In fact, its economy is projected to be growing faster than Europe’s this year.
With the decline in old-school corporate attitudes, there has been a rise in hostile-takeover attempts in recent years. Another is the labor market, where unemployment has fallen to 4.2 percent in September from 5.5 percent in 2003.
Around the same time, average monthly wages rose 0.5 percent in October from a year earlier, the seventh consecutive monthly gain.
Specialists say the job market has become dynamic as cost-conscious companies ended job guarantees. That has allowed talented, somewhat younger employees to start changing companies, and to move more quickly upward.
One is Koichi Maruyama, who is 47. He left a comfortable spot as a department head at Japan Telecom, the established long-distance phone company, to take the No. 2 job at IP Mobile, a 3-year-old startup with just 20 employees and hopes of blanketing the country with wireless Internet access.
He admits that joining IP Mobile was a risk, but he calls the job more exciting, and more lucrative if the company takes off.
“Ten years ago, someone like me wouldn’t have imagined doing this,” Maruyama said. “This is not the Japan of 10 years ago.”