TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan's unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage point from the previous month to 2.4 percent in January, worsening for the first time in four months but still at a low level amid the country's chronic labor shortage, government data showed Friday.
The seasonally adjusted number of unemployed in the reporting month increased 120,000, or 7.9 percent, from a month earlier to 1.64 million, partly due to a rise in the number of midcareer job seekers, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
