Abstract
Based on the jobs-to-applicants ratio in the six prefectures of Tohoku, the employment situation in the three prefectures affected by the tsunami and nuclear power accident (Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima) changed dramatically between six months after the disaster (as of October 2011) and eighteen months after the disaster (as of October 2012). At the six-month point, employment in coastal areas most damaged by the tsunami was characterized by a “shortage of jobs” for local residents looking for work, owing to a mismatch of working locations, occupations, etc. At the eighteen month point, however, this had changed to a “shortage of labor”, whereby local companies could not hire the human resources they wanted in the disaster-affected area. Although this situation was temporarily boosted by reconstruction demand in the construction industry and elsewhere, the long-term prospects for problems of the employment structure in Tohoku seem by no means rosy. In this paper, the situation of employment in the three disaster-affected prefectures (particularly Miyagi Prefecture) will be analyzed in detail.