But there’s another, longer-running trend happening in the Japanese economy that could prove interesting for American policymakers: Female employment has been steadily rising.
但日本经济中出现的另一个长期趋势可能会引起美国决策者的兴趣：女性就业率一直在稳步上升。
Working-age Japanese women have been joining the labor market for years, a trend that has continued strongly in recent months as a tight labor market prods companies to work to attract new employees.
日本适龄工作女性加入劳动力市场的趋势已持续多年，近几个月来，随着劳动力市场紧张，促使企业努力吸引新员工，这一趋势持续强劲。
The jump in female participation has happened partly by design. Since about 2013, the Japanese government has tried to make both public policies and corporate culture more friendly to women in the work force. The goal was to attract a new source of talent at a time when the world’s fourth-largest economy faces an aging and shrinking labor market.
女性参与率的上升在一定程度上是刻意引导的结果。大约自2013年以来，日本政府一直努力使公共政策和企业文化对职场女性更加友好。目的是在这个世界第四大经济体面临劳动力市场老龄化和萎缩之际，吸引新的人才来源。
“Where Japan did well over the recent decade is putting the care infrastructure in place for working parents,” Nobuko Kobayashi, a partner at EY-Parthenon in Japan, wrote in an email.
“近十年来，日本做得好的地方在于为在职父母提供了照护基础设施，”安永-帕特侬驻日本合伙人小林信子（音）在电子邮件中写道。
Still, even some who were around when the “womenomics” policies were designed have been caught off guard by just how many Japanese women are now choosing to work thanks to the policy changes and to shifting social norms.
尽管如此，即使是一些在“女性经济学”政策制定时就开始关注它的人，也会惊讶于政策的变化和社会规范的转令如今如此之多的日本女性选择工作。
“We all underestimated it,” said Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who advised the Japanese government while it was instituting the policies meant to bring on more female workers. Mr. Posen thought at the time that they might be able to get perhaps 800,000 women into the labor market, far fewer than the roughly three million who have actually joined (albeit many of them are part time).
“我们都低估了它，”彼得森国际经济研究所所长亚当·波森说。在日本政府制定旨在吸引更多女性上班族的政策时，他曾为日本政府提供建议。波森当时认为，他们或许能让80万名女性进入劳动力市场，这个数字远远少于实际加入的大约300万名女性（尽管其中许多人是兼职）。
It’s a surprise that could serve as an important reminder to economic officials around the world. Economists often try to guess how much a nation’s labor force can expand by extrapolating from history — and they tend to assume that there are limits to how many people can be lured into the labor market, since some are likely to stay home as caretakers or for other reasons.
这个惊人的数字可能会给世界各地的经济官员带来重要的启发。经济学家经常试图通过历史进行推断，来猜测一个国家的劳动力可以扩大到什么程度——他们倾向于假设，被吸引到劳动力市场的人数是有限的，因为有些人可能会因为照顾家人等原因而留在家里。
But history has served as a poor guide in Japan over the past decade as social standards, marriage rates and fertility rates have shifted. And the lesson provided by the Japanese experience is simple: Women may be a bigger potential labor force than economists typically count on.
但在过去十年里，随着社会标准、结婚率和生育率的变化，历史对日本的指导作用并不大。日本经验提供的教训很简单：女性可能是比经济学家通常预期更大的潜在劳动力。
“Clearly, women in Japan wanted to work,” Mr. Posen said. “It raises questions about what is a reasonable expectation for female labor force participation.”
“很明显，日本女性想工作，”波森说。“这引发了一个问题——对女性劳动力参与的合理预期是什么。”
That message could be a relevant one for the United States’ central bank, the Federal Reserve.
对于美国的中央银行——美联储来说，这可能是一个有用的信息。
How much room the U.S. labor market has to expand is a key question for the Fed in 2024. Over the past year, inflation has come down in the United States and wage pressures have moderated even as hiring has stayed strong and the economy has expanded rapidly. That positive outcome has been possible because the nation’s supply of workers has been expanding.
美国劳动力市场有多大的扩张空间，这是2024年美联储面临的一个关键问题。在过去一年里，美国的通货膨胀率有所下降，工资压力有所缓和，即使在招聘保持强劲，经济迅速扩张的情况下也是如此。之所以能够取得这样的积极成果，是因为美国的劳动力供应一直在扩大。
Labor force growth has come from two big sources in recent years: Immigration has picked up, and labor force participation has been recovering after falling during the pandemic. That is especially true for women in their prime working years, between the ages of 25 to 54, who have been participating in the job market at record or near-record rates.
近年来，劳动力增长有两个主要来源：移民人数增加，劳动力参与率在疫情期间下降后一直在恢复。对于处在黄金工作年龄段（25岁至54岁）的女性来说尤其如此，她们参加就业市场的比例达到或接近创纪录的水平。
Now, economists are asking whether the expansion can continue. Immigration into the United States does appear to be poised to persist: Economists at Goldman Sachs said the United States could add about one million more immigrants than normal this year. The question is whether participation will continue to pick up.
现在，经济学家们在问，这种扩张能否持续下去。移民进入美国似乎还会持续：高盛的经济学家表示，美国今年的移民数量可能会比往年多出100万左右。问题是，劳动参与率是否会继续上升。
For the moment, it appears to be leveling off on an overall basis over the past year or so. Given that the population is aging, and older people work less, many economists say the overall number could stay steady and even fall over time. Given those trends, some economists doubt that the improvement in labor supply can continue.
就目前而言，过去一年左右的总体情况似乎趋于平稳。鉴于人口老龄化和老年人工作减少，许多经济学家说，总体数字可能会保持稳定，甚至随着时间的推移而下降。鉴于这些趋势，一些经济学家怀疑劳动力供应的改善能否持续下去。
“Further rebalancing of the labor market will need to come from slower growth in labor demand rather than continued rapid growth in worker supply,” one analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concluded this year.
旧金山联邦储备银行今年的一项分析得出结论：“劳动力市场的进一步再平衡需要来自劳动力需求的放缓增长，而不是劳动力供应的持续快速增长。”
But in the late 2010s, economists also thought that the American labor market had little room to add new workers — only to find themselves surprised as people kept coming back from the sidelines.
但在2010年代末，经济学家还认为美国劳动力市场几乎没有增加新工人的空间——结果却发现劳动力持续入场，这让他们感到惊讶。
And while female prime-age working rates have held fairly steady since last summer, the Japanese experience raises the question: Could American women in particular end up working in bigger numbers?
虽然自去年夏天以来，黄金年龄女性就业率一直相当稳定，但日本的经验引发了一个问题：美国女性的就业人数最终会增加吗？
The United States once had higher female labor force participation for working-age women than other advanced economies, but it has now been surpassed by many, including Japan as of 2015.
美国适龄女性劳动力参与率一度高于其他发达经济体，但现在已经被许多国家超过，包括2015年被日本超过。
These days, about 77 percent of prime-age women in the United States have a job or are looking for one. That number is about 83 percent for Japanese women, up from about 74 percent a decade ago and about 65 percent in the early 1990s. Japanese women now work in shares that are about on a par with Australia, although some nations like Canada still have higher working-age female labor force participation.
如今，美国大约77%的黄金年龄女性有工作或正在找工作。日本女性的这一比例约为83%，高于10年前的约74%和20世纪90年代初的约65%。尽管加拿大等一些国家的适龄女性劳动参与率仍然较高，但日本女性目前的劳动参与率与澳大利亚大致相当。
Those changes came about for several reasons. The Japanese government made some important policy moves, for one thing, such as increasing child care center capacity.
出现这些变化有几个原因。日本政府采取了一些重要的政策举措，比如增加托儿所的容量。
The nation’s changing attitudes toward family also played a role in freeing up women for work. The average age of people marrying for the first time has been steadily rising, and fertility rates are at record lows.
国家对家庭观念的转变也在解放女性从事工作方面发挥了作用。首次结婚的平均年龄一直在稳步上升，生育率也处于历史最低水平。
“Delaying marriage, delaying childbearing years, not getting married at all — that’s the big societal backdrop,” said Paul Sheard, an economist who has long been focused on the nation.
“晚婚、晚育、不结婚——这是大的社会背景，”长期关注这个国家的经济学家保罗·谢尔德说。
But there have been limits. There is still a tax penalty for second earners in the nation, and the quality of jobs women hold is not great. They are often lower-paid and for limited hours. Women are also largely absent from leadership ranks in Japanese companies.
但也有一些限制。在这个国家，家庭中若有第二收入者，纳负更重，女性所从事的工作质量也不高。她们的工资通常较低，工作时间有限。在日本公司的领导层中，也基本上没有女性的身影。
Kathy Matsui, the former vice chair of Goldman Sachs Group’s Japan unit and the woman who spearheaded womenomics as an idea, has said the effort needs continued work.
高盛集团日本分公司前副董事长、率先提出女性经济学概念的凯西·松井表示，这项工作需要继续努力。
Still, Japan’s experience could offer hints at what lies ahead in the United States. Fertility and marriage rates are also down in America, for instance, which could create space for working rates among young and middle-aged women to keep rising in the near term, although it does plant the seeds for a smaller population and economy down the road. Remote or hybrid work arrangements could also make it easier for caretakers to work.
不过，日本的经验可以为美国未来的发展提供一些启示。例如，美国的生育率和结婚率也在下降，这可能为年轻和中年女性的工作率在短期内继续上升创造空间，尽管这也为未来人口和经济规模的缩减埋下了种子。远程或混合工作安排也可以使照护者更加容易参与工作。
And some of the more family-friendly policies that Japan has used could be a model for the United States, experts said.
专家说，日本采取的一些对家庭更友好的政策可以作为美国的榜样。
Ms. Kobayashi at EY-Parthenon noted that children on the nursery center waiting lists decreased to 2,680 this year from 19,900 five years earlier.
安永-帕特侬的小林信子指出，托儿所等候名单上的儿童从五年前的1.99万名减少到了今年的2680名。
But Japan could learn from the United States’ more flexible work culture, said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. That allows women to avoid dropping out of the job market and disrupting their career paths when they do have children.
但亚洲协会政策研究所副所长温迪·卡特勒表示，日本可以向美国更灵活的工作文化学习。在这种文化中，女性在有了孩子后也可以不必退出就业市场、打乱职业道路。
“Looking at the quality of these jobs is going to be more and more important,” Ms. Cutler said.
“关注这些工作的质量将变得越来越重要，”卡特勒说。
Jeanna Smialek自华盛顿为时报报道美联储和经济新闻。
翻译：晋其角
