Nevertheless, the labor force participation rate of men (aged between 15 and 59 years) has not recovered to the level before the "lost two decades," and  10  this may be a reason why labor market conditions are not tight enough to push prices upward.7 In order to better grasp the employment situation from various aspects, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications started to include items related to labor underutilization and collected data from January 2018 in the Labour Force Survey, in addition to the previously compiled labor force status; that is, employed persons, unemployed persons, and persons not in the labor force.8 As shown in the right-hand side of Chart  19, labor underutilization consists of (1)  "persons in time-related  underemployment," which are part-time employees who wish to work longer hours or full-time, including those who currently are working short hours due to employers' circumstances, such as the need to make production adjustments, (2) "unemployed persons," which are persons who have been seeking jobs within the previous one month and are ready to work as soon as a job becomes available, and (3) "potential labor force," which is comprised of those categorized neither as employed nor unemployed in the Labour Force Survey, potentially able to work because they are willing to do so, but did not seek jobs.
In the case of the ECB, the rules specify that it can lend only to sound institutions and against appropriate collateral. The appropriateness of the collateral depends in particular on whether the country under stress follows rigorously the IMF/EU adjustment programme and is on track to regain market access. The soundness of institutions, which is assessed primarily by supervisors, is also a key principle.