Word: laboral
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...global recession has again exposed the structural weaknesses that plague Japan: overdependence on exports to drive economic growth, anemic domestic demand, inefficient enterprises and barriers to competition. It's no secret that the root of all of these problems is demographics. An aging population is shrinking Japan's labor force and consumer market. The country's working-age population (aged 15 and over) has declined 2% since 1999. Over the same period, the number of workers aged 65 and up expanded 19%, while the labor force of workers aged 25 to 34 shrank 9%. (Read "Japan: Stimulating the World Markets...
...government has taken some steps to fix this situation. Labor deregulation in the late 1990s allowed firms to cut costs and become more competitive by hiring temporary, part-time and irregular workers. This change has been, if anything, too successful. Part-timers and temps today make up a third of the labor force, and most of them are young. This group should be a wellspring of domestic demand. Young people starting out in life are usually prodigious consumers as they purchase cars, buy homes and raise children. But part-timers and temps are not eligible for company benefits and certainly...
...successful. "What you have is a small number of brilliant people taking up problems that may seem marginal compared to the broader socio-economic debates going on, but which it turns out a lot of people are very concerned with," explains Guy Groux, a specialist in French social and labor conflict for the National Center for Scientific Research. "It's a real 2.0 movement in being able to project a far larger image - and produce a much bigger reaction - than such a small initial protest base previously allowed." (Read: "Why the French Love to Strike...
...thirtysomethings with advanced degrees, the multiplying collectives try to put politicians on the spot by spelling out plausible solutions to the biggest issues facing the country. Since his election in 2007, President Sarkozy has pushed through a wide array of measures designed to fix some of those problems - labor flexibility, opportunities for young graduates, hiring incentives - which French politicians have been unwilling or unable to tackle for decades. But Sarkozy's reforms have rarely delivered all they promised, and continue to ignore some problems. With young French so frustrated and angry, it's little wonder that the new protest movement...
...exiled Burmese dissidents have criticized Webb for lending legitimacy to the generals. But Webb did, at least, extract one concession from the junta. When the Senator's plane left Burma on Aug. 16, it carried an extra occupant: John Yettaw, the American sentenced to seven years' imprisonment with hard labor for his midnight swim to Suu Kyi's home. His saga--that of a middle-aged Mormon from Missouri who used homemade flippers to visit the world's most famous political prisoner--is stranger than any fiction, even that of Senator Jim Webb...