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1997 Employment Status Survey Outline of Survey

1. Purpose

The purpose of the Employment Status Survey is to obtain basic data for several kinds of administrative measures by clarifying people's usual economic activity. For this purpose, it surveys the detail of the employment structure, change of usual economic activity, desire for work, etc.

The survey has been conducted almost every three years since 1956, but every five years after 1982. The 1997 survey was the 13th.

2. Legal basis

This survey is a designated statistics survey (No.87) under the Statistics Law (Law No. 18, 1947) and is carried out in accordance with the Ordinance for the Employment Status Survey (Ordinace No.25 of the Prime Minister's Office, 1982).

3. Date of the survey

The survey was conducted as of 0:00 am of October 1, 1997.

4. Coverage and samples

(1) Area Coverage

This survey was conducted in about 29 thousand enumeration districts that were selected from the 1995 Population Census enumeration districts according to the direction of the Director-General of the Management and Coordination Agency.

(2) Samples

About 430 thousand households in the enumeration districts were selected and about 1.1 million members of the households aged 15 and over were surveyed.

However, the following persons were excluded from the enumeration:

Foreign diplomatic and consular corps, foreign military personnel (including their family or party members)
Residents in the camps or vessels of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces
Sentenced persons in prisons or detention houses, and inmates of reformatories or women's guidance homes.

5. Topics to be surveyed

The following topics are contained in the questionnaire of the 1997 survey.

(1) For household members aged 15 and over

A. All household members

Name and sex,
Relationship to household head,
Month and year of birth,
Marital status,
Place of residence a year ago,
Education,
Usual economic activity

B. For working persons

a) On main job

Status in employment,
Form of employment,
Type of leagal organization, name and industry of establishment,
Occupation,
Employment size of enterprise,
Annual working days,
Regularity of work,
Weekly working hours,
Annual income,
Desire for work,
Desire for working hours,
Reason for wishing to change the job,
Kind of job desired,
Whether seeking a job,
Change of usual economic activity over the year,
Duration engaged in present job,
Usual economic activity a year ago,
Reason for taking up a job newly,
Whether had a job perviously

b) On secondary job

Whether having secondary job,
Status in employment,
Industry of establishment

c) On previous job

The time of leaving the previous job,
Reason for leaving the previous job,
Status in employment,
Industry of establishment,
Occupation,
Employment size of enterprise,
Duration engaged in the previous job

C. For not working persons

a) On desire for work, etc.
Whether wishing to work,
Reason for wishing to work,
Whether wishing to work mainly or partly,
Kind of job desired,
Whether seeking a job,
Reason for not seeking a job,
Method used to seek a job,
Duration of job seeking,
Intention to take up job,
Usual economic activity a year ago,
Whether had a job previously

b) On previous job

The time of leaving previous job,
Reason for leaving the previous job,
Status in employment,
Industry of establishment,
Occupation,
Employment size of enterprise,
Duration engaged in present job

(2) For each of households

Number and age of household members under 15,
Number of household members aged 15 and over,
Sources of household income,
Annual income of the household

6. Method of the survey

(1) Organization

The survey was conducted through the following channel:
Director-General of The Management and Coordination Agency
(Director-General of Statistics Bureau) -->
Prefectural Governors -->
Heads of Municipalities (Shi, Ku, Machi, and Mura) -->
Supervisors -->
Enumerators -->
Households

(2) Execution of the Survey

The survey was conducted according to the following procedures:

Preparation of the household list
Preceding the survey date, the enumerators visited the enumeration district assigned to them and prepared a list of all households within the districts.
Selection of the sample household
Sample households were selected from the list according to the prescribed procedure at the prefectural government.
Survey field work
Preceding the survey date, the enumerator visited the selected households to distribute questionnaires and requested their members to fill them out.
After the survey date, the enumerator visited the households again to collect the filled-in questionnaires.

7. Method of estimation

The survey results were estimated with the benchmark population as of October 1, 1997.

8. Tabulation and release schedule of the results

The results of this survey were tabulated from the collected questionnaires at the Statistics Center and were released by the Statistics Bureau, the Management and Coordination Agency.

The reports of the results are published as the following:

(1) Preliminary results for prefectures, June 1998

(2) Results for regions, July 1998

(3) Results for Japan, October 1998

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