Latest news with #AeonMall
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Nikkei Asia
4 days ago
- Business
- Nikkei Asia
Japan's construction bottleneck hits $100bn as labor crunch deepens
TOKYO -- Backlogs in factory and commercial building projects are piling up across Japan, with unfilled orders soaring to an all-time high of more than 15 trillion yen ($103 billion). The construction slowdown, fueled by a chronic labor shortage, has intensified since last year, when new overtime limits further strained the sector's already thin workforce. Long a pillar of domestic demand, the construction industry makes up about 5% of Japan's gross domestic product and roughly a third of total capital spending. Unless the sector accelerates its project delivery rate, private investment and public infrastructure spending could stall, threatening broader economic growth. One company facing project delays due to the labor crunch is Aeon Mall. The retail developer has postponed the planned opening of its shopping mall in Date, Fukushima prefecture, north of Tokyo, from the end of 2024 to the second half of 2026, citing an inability to secure enough workers to complete construction on schedule. "The challenge in the Tohoku region lies not only in the limited pool of construction workers, but also in their wide geographic dispersion," a company official said. Similar cases have cropped up across Japan. As of March, the backlog of orders at construction companies reached 15.3 trillion yen on a 12-month moving average basis, according to statistics from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Driven in part by rising prices, this is the highest level since April 2011, when comparable industrywide data first became available. The volume of order backlogs surged in the early 1990s, before the prolonged period of economic stagnation that hit like a delayed hangover years after the collapse of Japan's bubble economy. Today's delays are largely driven by labor shortages rather than swelling demand. As of 2024, the construction sector employed 4.77 million workers, down 6% from a decade earlier, according to a survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Of those, 800,000 were aged 65 or older, accounting for nearly 20% of the workforce, up 5 percentage points over the same period. The growing societal emphasis on work-life balance has made it more difficult for the construction industry to secure labor. Regulations that took effect in April 2024 generally limit construction workers' overtime to 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year. As a result, the industry's average working hours per person fell 32.3 hours in 2024 compared to the previous year, far exceeding the all-industry average decline of 14.3 hours. Competition for workers is intensifying. In Hokkaido, where Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Rapidus is building a mass-production plant for advanced chips, the number of construction workers employed by contractors with a workforce of 10 or more reached about 130,000 in 2023, up 23% from the previous year. Monthly basic salaries in the region averaged around 326,000 yen, an increase of more than 30,000 yen, compared with a national average rise of about 14,000 yen. Construction companies are tightening their criteria for new projects, with greater scrutiny of profit margins. In 2024, the average unit price of construction starts for private-sector industrial buildings climbed 18% from the previous year, reaching about 300,000 yen per square meter. "We carefully evaluate projects based on their profit potential and expected completion timelines," a top executive at a major construction company said. Unable to secure sufficient labor or win projects with healthy profit margins, many smaller companies have been forced out of business. The construction bottleneck has also been exacerbated by an industry-specific factor: the sector's continued reliance on a labor-intensive structure. "Japan's construction industry has been slow to adopt IT, largely because the sector is dominated by smaller companies," said Takayuki Sueyoshi, senior economist at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo. Japanese builders invest only about one-fifth as much per worker in labor-saving and efficiency-enhancing software as their British and French counterparts, according to an estimate by the institute. Given the construction sector's vital role in the Japanese economy, enhancing builders' capacity to manage workloads should be a top priority. If labor shortages continue, the industry will need to accelerate digitization and implement other productivity-enhancing measures.
Tokyo Reported
25-05-2025
- Tokyo Reported
American suspected in pepper-spray incident in Chiba: 'I lost my mind'
CHIBA (TR) – Chiba Prefectural Police have sent an American male to prosecutors over a pepper-spray incident at a shopping mall in Inzai City that sickened more than 40 people last week, reports (May 25). At around 2:40 p.m. on May 23, Eric Yen-Joo Lin, 51, allegedly sprayed pepper spray at two other men, aged 72 and 69, in the parking lot of Aeon Mall Chiba New Town. On Sunday police sent Lin to prosecutors on suspicion of inflicting injury. 'I lost my mind and sprayed the pepper spray,' Lin told police. 'I was attacked too.' Eric Yen-Joo Lin (X) The male targets of the spray, who had been shopping, suffered minor injuries, the Inzai Police Station said previously. According to police, 44 people complained of feeling unwell after the pepper spray was sprayed by Lin. Of them, twelve were taken to a hospital. Lin also told police that he had gotten into a dispute with the two men over cigarettes before the incident.
Tokyo Reported
23-05-2025
- Tokyo Reported
American in custody after Chiba pepper-spray incident sickens 40
CHIBA (TR) – Chiba Prefectural Police on Friday arrested an American male following a pepper-spray incident at a shopping mall in Inzai City sickened more than 40 people, reports Nippon News Network (May 23). At around 2:40 p.m., Eri Yen-Joo Lin, 51, allegedly sprayed pepper spray at two other men, aged 72 and 69, in the parking lot of Aeon Mall Chiba New Town. Both men, who had been shopping, suffered minor injuries, police said. According to the Inzai Police Station, 44 people complained of feeling unwell after the pepper spray was sprayed by Lin. Of them, twelve were taken to a hospital. Lin told police that he had gotten into a dispute with the men over cigarettes. 'I lost my temper and sprayed the pepper spray,' he said. Police accused Lin of inflicting injury. They are also speaking with the hospitalized men to learn the details of what led to the incident. Shopping mall The shopping mall where the incident occurred is mainly composed of four buildings. The parking lot is on the first floor. After the incident, many police officers and emergency personnel gathered to deal with the situation. As well, several wheelchairs were seen being brought in and access to some of the aisles near the parking lot was restricted, reports NHK (May 23). A woman who was eating with three friends at a restaurant on the first floor of the shopping mall said, 'Suddenly, the people around me started coughing and my nose started stinging. About 20 people, including customers and store clerks, had the same symptoms. We got better quickly, but some were more severe. It was the first time something like this had happened to me, so I was surprised.' A woman in her 60s who lives in the city had come to shop at the facility. She said, 'I went into a store near the parking lot on the first floor, and suddenly started coughing uncontrollably, so the store clerk gave me some tea. My throat was itchy and it's still there. The atmosphere inside the facility was not the usual peaceful one, and I didn't know what was going on.'
AsiaOne
02-05-2025
- AsiaOne
Singapore car driver filmed getting into brawl with man at parking lot in JB, Malaysia News
A Singaporean driver was caught on camera getting involved in an altercation with another man at a parking lot in Johor Bahru. The incident occurred around 4pm at the car park outside Aeon Mall Bukit Indah on Thursday (May 1), China Press reported. According to China Press, the conflict began when the Singaporean driver of a white Toyota allegedly blocked the road and was honked at by another vehicle. Enraged, he then exited his car and approached the aquamarine-coloured vehicle behind. A 41-second video clip, which appeared to be filmed by a passenger in the car behind, showed the Singaporean in green pinning another man against the latter's open car door. After the two men were separated, the Singaporean driver was seen aggressively pointing his finger and yelling at the other man before walking back to his car. In the original Facebook post, which has been made private, the user appeared to mock the driver, writing: "Singaporeans are more powerful?" She added that he'd asked the man to "wait for the police to arrive", to which he said it "depends on his mood". In a media statement on Friday (May 2), the Johor Iskandar Puteri police confirmed the incident and said investigations are ongoing. They added that the two men involved in the incident were a 49-year-old Singaporean and a 21-year-old Malaysian. [[nid:716659]]
