The economic crisis of Japan's "lost decade," in which companies plagued with bad loans went bust, appears to be a thing of the past. The unemployment rate, once above 5 percent, came down to 3.8 percent in December. The employment rate for university graduates has risen for four consecutive years. But economic gaps, including gaps between the rich and the poor and between prosperous large companies and economically weak smaller companies, remain a big issue.

Meanwhile, December's effective ratio of job openings to job applications slipped to 0.98, down 0.04 point from October. Although November's unemployment rate had improved for the first time in four months, the openings-to-applications ratio had fallen below 1 for the first time in two years due to a 10.9 percent reduction in job offerings, mainly among smaller companies.

Lawmakers and policymakers have failed to pay enough attention to the problem of economic gaps that have emerged as a result of the government's market mechanism-oriented policy. Symbolic of the policy's effects is the fact that the percentage of irregular workers such as part-timers and temporary workers in the workforce went up from 21 percent in 1995 to 33 percent in 2006. The hourly wage of a male part-timer is 53 percent — and that of a female part-timer is 69 percent — of the wages of a regularly employed worker in the same field.