Quarterly Survey of Overseas Subsidiaries

3. Domestic and Overseas Employment

• Parent companies had a total of 2,526,000 employees, a decrease of 0.4% from the same quarter of the previous year. There were decreases in 10 sectors including transportation machinery but excluding metals.
  
  Overseas local corporations had a total of 1,358,000 employees, an increase of 6.0% from the same quarter of the previous year. There were increases in all regions except the NIES 3 countries, the increases in China and North America being particularly significant.
• In terms of prospects for the first quarter of 1998, the proportion of all head office companies that forecast an increase has decreased by 23.4 points, falling 2.7 points from the previous quarter. All sectors are in the negative, and 9 sectors show a decrease.
  
  Similarly, viewing the data for overseas local corporations, the proportion of local corporations in all regions that forecast an increase decreased by 7.5 points, falling by 4.2 points from the previous quarter. By region, the scale of the decrease in the NIES 3 countries was large (from -0.5 to -14.6).