I should note that the estimated number of women who wish to work still stands at about 2.74 million, which shows that women continue to constitute a considerably large potential labor force. Japan's economy currently faces severe labor shortages, and a worsening of this situation is inevitable amid the further decline in the working-age population.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that, if women's labor participation rate in Japan were to remain the same over the next 20 years, the labor supply would contract by 17 percent; meanwhile, if women's participation rate were to converge with that of men over the next 20 years, the fall in labor supply would be limited to 5 percent.