ABSTRACT
According John Bennett et al., Japan produces 10% of the world’s total annual products, with 3% of the world’s population, on 0.3% of the world’s land area. 1 Though construction investment in Japan reached approximately JPY87 trillion 2 in 1991, larger than any other country in the world, productivity in the construction industry has chronically looked less than promising. Japan’s construction industry employs approximately six million workers or roughly 10% of Japan’s total work force. While the volume of construction has continued to grow, the industry remained plagued by a number of problems, including a chronic labour shortage, ageing of the work force, low productivity, slow improvements in mechanisation and labour saving devices, and perhaps most important, harsh working conditions. In a domestic aspect, the increase in productivity in the construction area has lagged behind the domestic average. This appears to be a consequence of the low intensity of capital funds. In other words, large contractors are extremely limited in number, all the remaining ones being small in capital. The large contractors have grown more and more by improving their technology and mechanisation as well as finance and other general business capabilities, operating their own engineering laboratories for technical advancement. The medium and small contractors still operate at small capital funding levels. International Comparison of Construction Data for 1995
|
Japan |
England |
France |
Germany |
U.S.A. |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Construction investment in trillion JPY |
79.80 (100) |
4.07 (12.3%) |
9.39 (26.0%) |
19.48 (19.8%) |
51.53 (64.6%) |
|
Construction investment compared with GDP in % |
16.3% |
4.1% |
6.5% |
8.6% |
7.6% |
|
Numbers of construction contractors (in ′000) |
552 (100) |
210 (38.0%) in 1990 |
307 (55.6%) in 1993 |
170 (30.8%) in 1993 |
578 (104.7%) in 1990 |
|
Numbers of construction industry workers (in ′000) |
6,630 (100) |
1,805 (27.2%) in 1989 |
1,443 (21.8%) in 1994 |
2,101 (31.7%) in 1994 |
7,493 (113.0%) in 1994 |
