Japan to compensate for jobless benefit shortfalls from March

January 24, 2019

Tokyo--Japanese labor minister Takumi Nemoto said Thursday that the government will pay from March compensation to current recipients of jobless and other benefits for shortfalls caused by a flawed monthly labor survey.

At issue is a change that the ministry made in 2004 to the survey method without taking required procedures. The change caused wage data in the survey to come out lower than they actually were.

The government underpaid jobless and other benefits to many recipients because the wage data were used to set the amounts of the benefits.

At a meeting of the House of Representatives labor committee, opposition parties voiced their suspicion that the labor ministry manipulated wage statistics to dress up data related to Abenomics, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policy package.

The opposition sees as specifically problematic the ministry's remedial action taken for the survey from the January 2018 release without any announcement. Following the action, monthly data showed strong growth in nominal wages in 2018.

The opposition, including the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, said the ministry may have tried to highlight wage growth out of political considerations.

At the beginning of the special meeting, held during the recess of the Diet, the country's parliament, Nemoto apologized for causing trouble to the public.

Compensation payments to past recipients will also begin early, he said, adding that compensation for underpaid work accident insurance benefits and medical insurance benefits for sailors will start in April.

Participants slammed a report released Tuesday by a special inspection committee of the ministry. The report did not recognize any organizational cover-up of the survey irregularities.

"I wonder why the report came out after only seven days of investigation," Chinami Nishimura of the CDPJ said, adding that the report does not say anything about key issues.

During the meeting, it turned out that some interviews by the special inspection committee were conducted by ministry officials who were committee members.

Nemoto defended their involvement, saying the committee also has experts from outside the ministry, and that they worked with ministry officials as a team.

Strong criticism came also from the ruling camp.

Keigo Masuya of Komeito, the coalition ally of the Liberal Democratic Party, said the ministry caused economic damage to many people by leaving untouched the "self-righteous" administrative measure taken in disregard of the law. Jiji Press