E) It utilized a common information-gathering approach reflected in a series of collaboratively developed field guides. Generally speaking, this approach focused heavily on existing national income data sources, such as employment surveys, estimates of the relationship of expenditures to wages by industry, and other similar data. In Japan, the principal data source used was the Survey on Private Nonprofit Institutions (Minkan-hieiri-dantai jittaichosa) and Basic Survey on Civic Activity Organizations (Shimin-katsudo-dantai kihonchosa).
F) It was quantitative, seeking not just general impressions but solid empirical data on this set of organizations, including data on employment, volunteers, expenditures, and revenues.
In the following, we summarize the major empirical findings of the descriptive portion of this work in Japan and compares them to the results elsewhere in other developed countries and internationally. Unless otherwise noted, all data here relate to 1995 and monetary values are expressed in Japanese Yen.
Six major findings emerge from this work on the scope, structure, financing, and role of the nonprofit sector in Japan:
2. A substantial economic force
In the first place, aside from its social and political importance, the nonprofit sector is a significant economic force in Japan, accounting for significant shares of national expenditures and employment.
More specifically:
1) A $214 billion industry.
Even excluding its religious worship component, the nonprofit sector in Japan had operating expenditures of nearly $214 billion in 1995, a considerable 4.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product.7
2) A major employer.
Behind these expenditures is a sizable work force that includes the equivalent of 2.1 million full-time equivalent (FTE) paid workers. This represents 3.5 percent of all nonagricultural workers in the country, nearly 14 percent of service employees, and the equivalent of the total number of all federal, provincial, and municipal government workers (see Table 2).
3) More employees than in the largest private firm.
The Japanese nonprofit sector engages at least 28 times more employees than the country's largest private corporation and nearly 7 times more than the largest five firms combined. Thus, compared to the 2.1 million paid workers employed in Japan's nonprofit organizations, Japan's largest private corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., employs 77,000 workers, and the top five firms employ approximately 318,000.
