by Kathleen Brooks

Forget about an increase in divorce when the economy sours, in Japan marriage is on the rise. Bloomberg reports:

Women the Japanese call "marriage-hunters" are looking to tie the knot as companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to Sony Corp. fire thousands of workers and the nation heads for its biggest annual economic contraction since 1945. Marriages surged to a five-year high of 731,000 in 2008 as wages stagnated and the unemployment rate rose for the first time in six years.

"Financial concerns are a major reason for the increase in marriage-hunting," said Toshihiro Nagahama, chief economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. "Women are motivated more than ever to find a financially sound partner."

 

The current economic crisis has sent Japan's unemployment rate up the charts. In January, it was at 4.1 percent. And things are expected to get much worse. According to Bloomberg, economists at Dai-Ichi Life Research and JPMorgan Chase & Co. expect the jobless rate this year "to surpass the postwar peak of 5.5 percent in 2003."