Changes in Japan's Labor Market Next, I would like to talk about Japan's labor market.
As shown in Chart 17, Japan's unemployment rate continued to rise throughout the 1990s and until 2002, when it marked 5.5 percent; it then declined to the 3 percent level but rose again following the failure of Lehman Brothers, and has dropped to the range of 2.0-2.5 percent recently.5 Despite such improvement in labor market conditions, the growth in wages and prices has been sluggish.