East Japan Railway will shrink its rail workforce by about 10% over the coming years to bring it in line with sluggish commuter traffic, in the industry's first big post-pandemic retrenchment plan.

JR East's rail business -- the country's biggest -- now employs about 34,000 of the group's 71,000 employees. The operator of Tokyo's Yamanote line aims to cut this share to fewer than 30,000, President Yuji Fukasawa told Nikkei.

Demand for rail travel has yet to bounce back from its coronavirus slump. Revenue in JR East's transportation segment last quarter was only about 70% of the level of the same period of 2019.

"Traffic to greater Tokyo from outlying areas is clearly low," Fukasawa said. "Commuting and business travel demand probably won't go back to where it was before the coronavirus."

The weak outlook for business travel has spurred a similar shift at Japan Airlines, which plans to reassign about 3,000 personnel from its core airline business to other areas, including budget carriers and its mileage service.

Rather than offer early retirement, JR East plans to slim down the division through a combination of natural attrition and reassignment to other areas of the group with brighter prospects, such as real estate and retail. It will also scale back new hiring. ...continue reading