Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of the changes in the industrial and working structure of Hokkaido for 50 years post World War II.
Hokkaido had served as a food and material base from the Meiji Era in Japan. So, the industrial structure of Hokkaido was characterized by some industries consisting chiefly of farming, fishing, coal, steel, paper industry and so on. But these industries have now joined the ranks of declining industries, and the number of their workers has decreased drastically over the 50-year period.
Manufacturing, above all the metal and machine tool industries of Hokkaido is extreamly undeveloped. Nowadays more than 65 percent of the people are engaged in tertiary industries, and they have a tendency to put more weight on the tertiary industries than the primary and secondary ones. Hokkaido has a depressed economy because there are no industries to employ many people instead of in the above-mentioned main industries. Employment in service industries accounts for an increasingly large share of the total employment. In many jobs, female workers have made remarkable increases recently; however, one-third of them are not full time employees such as temporary workers and part-time workers. Now even white collar workers of big business often have a risk of being put on lease from their parent company to a subsidiary. Therefore; industrial reorganization has caused widespread vague fears about job prospects. I would like to clarify the industrial and employment situation of Hokkaido and show the outlook for the 21st Century.
