Growth or Gap

The talking points in the election of the House of Representatives are converging into whether people approve economic growth even though difference between the rich and poor will become great. According to research of Tokyo Shimbun, Japanese economy of these two years under the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shown apparent growth, while it is a phenomenon limited in some parts. Japanese society is actually separated in two.

Markets positively responded to Abenomics. Nikkei average jumped from ¥10 thousand in December 2012 to ¥17 thousand in this month. Value of Japanese yen against U.S. dollar declined from ¥84 a dollar to ¥118. Economic policy preferable for exporters brought certain consequence as far as seeing those numbers.

Numbers also say that profit corporations gained has not correctly distributed to individual workers. Asset investment has grown from ¥8.8 trillion to ¥9.4 trillion and bankruptcy declined from 6051 in the first half of FY 2012 to 5049 in the same period of FY 2014. However, internal reservation of private companies has increased from ¥274 trillion to ¥323 trillion. It indicates that profit was not distributed to the workers, but accumulated inside for possible slump in the future.

Abe stresses that he created a great number of jobs. Job offers for one job seeker increased from 0.82 to 1.10 and total number of employees slightly grew 51.6 million to 52.6 million. But ratio of unofficial employment, which is laid under deteriorated condition in terms of wage and working status, grew from 35.5% to 37.1%. Increased jobs are mainly cheap and unstable.

Monthly salary average of private companies were raised a little from ¥267 thousand to ¥268 thousand. This achievement was immediately offset by commodity price hike initiated by Abenomics. Considering inflation, wage decreased by 0.7% in November 2012. But it further decreased by 2.8% in October 2014. As its consequence gap between haves and have-nots got wider. Number of people with annual income of ¥10 million or more increased form 1.72 million to 1.85 million. Simultaneously, people with annual ¥2 million also increased from 10.9 million to 11.2 million. Ratio of family with no saving grew from 26.0% to 30.4%.

Those numbers indicate that Japanese economy is not healthy enough. U.S. President Barack Obama told that it was not clear if Japan was going to pull out of its long-running economic slump anytime soon. Credibility of Abenomics is yet endorsed by the world.