Chart 4 Improvements in the Fiscal Balance and Government Debt QQE began in April 2013, but these developments indicate that if it had started earlier, the unemployment rate in Japan without doubt would have remained at 3 percent or below throughout.
Given that the unemployment rate from the mid-1990s to 2012 on average was roughly 4.5 percent, unemployment was almost 2 percent higher than it could have been. This implies that, because 2 percent lower of workers could not find a job, the GDP level was on average slightly less than 2 percent lower than it would have been.