Unemployment in Japan

Agnese and Sala (2009) mentioned the puzzling performance of Japan in the past two decades is the object of growing attention in the literature. In this paper, we are discussing about one salient feature of this performance – the long term unemployment in Japan. According to Bloomberg, AFP on Business Times dated on 30 November 2011, it was mentioned the country faced a high unemployment rate at 4.5% in October 2011 which is higher than the 29 economists’ prediction. Our aim is to exam the causes of Japan’s long term unemployment in recent years in general and to understand about the measurement that the Japanese government has taken to minimise the high unemployment rate.
The article, in brief, mentioned about the highest level of unemployment rate in the three months period from August till October 2011, as impacts of the slowdown in economy because of post massive earthquake in March 2011, the negative influence of the Europe’s debt crisis deepening and gaining the Yen which impeded the nation’s recovery, and after all these “effects” that led many big manufacturers have the retrenchment of big number of workers such as at TDK Corp and Panasonic. The article also referred to the monetary policy that government may apply to help the unemployment rate drop.
The definition of unemployment, according to Carbaugh (2007) it is the group individuals who are not employed but are actively looking for works. Samuelson and Nordhaus (2005:311) in addition, argued that to be counted as unemployed, a person must do more than simply thinking about work but also must report specific efforts to find a job such as sending resumes or having job interview. According to Trading Economics' report on unemployment rate in Japan from 2010 to October 2011, below data shows that Japan in fact had higher unemployment rate in 2010 comparing to 2011 in general:

The unemployment rate in 2010 was ranged from 4.9% to 5.3% and then went down to 4.6% by December 2010. In 2011, from