InsideJapan News Network

The unemployment rate in Japan rose by 0.1 percentage point in June, according to new figures recently released by the country's government.

In all, 2.93 million people were out of work in Japan last month, while 60.02 million were in employment of some kind. The same set of statistics revealed that the ratio of jobs per applicant was 0.63, which is higher than the predicted level of 0.61.

However, the actual figure of unemployment in the country might be much worse, according to Taro Saito, senior economist at NLI Research Institute.

"These figures do not show the employment situation of the disaster-hit prefectures. The actual joblessness must be much worse than the announced reading," he said.

When compared to other nations around the world, Japan's situation does not appear so dire. It is a similar rate to other countries in south-east Asia, with China's unemployment rate standing at 4.1 per cent and South Korea's at 3.7 per cent.

Written by Susan Ballion