One of the core aspects of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Abenomics has been "womenomics," which aims to put more women into the labor force in the hopes of increasing Japan's growth potential.
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ROSENBERG: This may be 'one of the most bullish, and underappreciated, charts on the planet right now'
Japanese women are entering the workforce in droves.
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Since Abe took the helm as prime minister in 2012, Japan's female labor force participation rate has ticked up, climbing nearly 5 percentage points for those in the 25-54 age bracket over the past 5 years.
"This may be one of the most bullish, and underappreciated, charts on the planet right now," Rosenberg said in a note to clients. "[W]e are talking about the boom in the female participation rate in Japan here."
Bringing these individuals off the sidelines has underpinned a revival in aggregate income and helped buoy domestic demandTo give you an idea of just how important this has been, consider that had the 25-54 year old female participation rate held at 2011’s level of 71.5%, this segment of the labor force would have fallen by 601,000 workers instead of rising by 530,000...that’s a big swing! This delta of 1.13 million employees equates to roughly $44 billion in GDP (using per capita figures of $38,894 from the World Bank)
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Japan is generally seen as a country with an unfavorable demographic trend, given its large, aging population. Prime age women entering the workforce could, theoretically, help offset some of the looming pain.
Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, told Business Insider last year.
That being said, although adding more women into the workforce is a smart idea economically, its implementation hasn't been exactly perfect.
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