Toyota Motor said on Sept. 30 it would take on 1,600 temporary workers from October -- twice as many as previously planned -- because sales are recovering more strongly than expected.
Toyota, which stopped recruiting such workers in June last year as it slashed production to cope with a plunge in demand, had announced three weeks ago that it would hire 800 temporary employees.
The world's largest automaker, which had about 1,300 contract workers in Japan at the end of August, will start taking on the employees from the beginning of October.
The decision reflects "gradually recovering worldwide automobile sales," spurred by government incentives aimed at reviving the economy, it said. The workers will initially be hired for up to six months.
Vehicle sales in Japan rose in August from a year earlier for the first time in 13 months, an automobile dealers' association has reported.
Toyota said on Sept. 28 its global production was down 8.7% year-on-year in August at 508,673 vehicles, but that was better than a 20.1% drop in July. Domestic sales went up 9.5% to 92,621 in August.
Temporary employees make up an increasingly large share of the Japanese workforce following the deregulation of the labor market in recent years, and they have been hardest hit by the wave of job cuts during the economic crisis.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2009
