Japan's contracting economy got a slew of bad news Friday when government figures showed that industrial production plunged by its biggest margin on record in November, the jobless rate jumped and household spending fell. Output at the nation's manufacturers tumbled 8.1 percent from October, the largest drop since Tokyo began measuring such data in 1953, as Japan's automakers and others slashed production to cope with slowing global demand. A government survey predicted further declines of 8 percent in December and 2.1 percent in January. “Exports and industrial production are falling so extraordinarily quickly that it almost defies analysis,” said Richard Jerram, chief economist at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo. The drop in factory production is nearly double the previous biggest decline of 4.3 percent in January 2001, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Earlier this week, trade data showed that exports plunged a record 26.7 percent in November. Many companies, including big names like Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp., have announced plans to cut production and workers. The yen's recent surge has also dealt a huge blow to the world's second-largest economy by eroding exporters' overseas earnings. The job cuts are already being reflected in a higher unemployment rate, which rose to 3.9 percent in November from 3.7 percent in October, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said. That's still below the 4.2 percent reached in August. The ministry said 2.56 million people were unemployed in Japan in November, an increase of 100,000 from a year earlier. Part-time and temporary workers have suffered the bulk of job cuts so far. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said Friday that given current company plans, 85,000 such workers will have lost their jobs between October and March, compared to about 3,300 permanent employees. The largest portion of such job cuts were in Aichi prefecture.
