COVID PANDEMIC WIDENS GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IN JAPAN

The coronavirus pandemic has brought significant economic impacts in Japan, with the widening gap between the rich and the poor being a prime example, Kyodo News reported.

The pandemic has cost many jobs, especially in the dining and travel industries, while stock and other asset markets are booming on the back of global monetary easing. At Isetan department store in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, which posts the highest sales of all department stores in Japan, a jewelry buyer calls strong sales last summer "mysterious."

Nomura Research Institute estimates wealthy households -- which hold net financial assets of more than 100 million yen -- totaled 1.33 million as of 2019.

Hiroyuki Miyamoto, a partner, and chief consultant at the Tokyo-based thinktank said the company is likely to make a similar estimate for 2020 because higher stock prices offset the economic impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, Mainichi Shimbun also reported.

Meanwhile, the pandemic took a toll on non-regular workers, many of whom work in service sectors.

The number of regular employees rose 360,000 in 2020 from a year earlier, but that of non-regular workers dropped 750,000, according to Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications data.

The result indicated that companies adjusted employment by cutting non-regular staff to survive the pandemic-hit economy.

Ryutaro Kono, chief economist at BNP Paribas Securities (Japan) Ltd., said the unstable non-regular employment is one of the reasons for the slow economic recovery in recent years.

If consumer spending becomes sluggish as non-regular workers cut expenditures on fears of being laid off in recessions, Kono warned "the recovery of the Japanese economy will continue to be lackluster."

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