4) Volunteer inputs.
Even this does not capture the full scope of the nonprofit sector in Japan, for this sector also attracts a considerable amount of volunteer effort. Indeed, an estimated 21.4 percent of Japanese citizens report contributing their time to nonprofit organizations. This translates into another 700,000 FTE employees, which increases the total number of FTE employees of nonprofit organizations in Japan to 2.8 million, or 4.6 percent of total employment in the country (see Figure 3).
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5) Religion.
The inclusion of religious worship would boost these totals by another 148,000 paid employees and 155,000 FTE volunteers. With religious worship included, nonprofit paid employment therefore rises from 3.5 percent to 3.7 percent of total paid employment; factoring in volunteers, this figure increases to 5.1 percent. Religion also generates operating expenditures of some $23 billion, thus bringing total expenditures to over $236 billion, the equivalent of 5 percent of GDP excluding volunteers.
3. One of the largest nonprofit sectors among the 22 project countries
In terms of the number of people employed, Japan's nonprofit sector is clearly one of the largest in the world. However, in relation to the size of the national economy, the nonprofit sector in Japan falls behind that of most other developed, industrialized countries.
1) The second largest nonprofit sector.
At 2.1 million FTE workers, the Japanese nonprofit sector employs more people than that of any of the other 21 project countries except the United States (8.6 million FTE employees). The country with the next largest nonprofit sector, Germany, has a considerably smaller sector (1.4 million FTE workers).
2) Below the international average.
Though large in absolute size, the Japanese nonprofit sector is still quite small in relation to the overall Japanese economy. As Figure 4 shows, the relative size of the nonprofit sector varies greatly among the countries studied, ranging from a high of 12.6 percent of total nonagricultural employment in the Netherlands to a low of less than 1 percent of total employment in Mexico. The overall 22-country average, however, is 4.8 percent. This means that, excluding religious worship, Japan's nonprofit sector falls below the global average, comprising 3.5 percent of total employment.
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3) Below the developed countries' average.
As shown in Figure 5, the relative share of employment in the Japanese nonprofit sector is about half that of the Western European (7.0 percent) and other developed countries (6.9 percent) averages. However, the level of employment still exceeds that in all Eastern European and most Latin American countries, as well as Finland.
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4) Margin of difference widens with volunteers.
The margin of difference between the relative size of the Japanese nonprofit sector and that of other developed countries widens when volunteers are added. Thus, with volunteer time figured in, nonprofit organizations account for only 4.6 percent of total employment in Japan, whereas comparable figures for other developed countries are more than twice as large (see Figure 5). If Japan were to utilize the number of volunteers that is proportional to the size of its national economy and comparable to the number in other developed countries (on average about 3.1 percent of the nonagricultural employment), Japan would engage 1.9 million FTE volunteers, nearly 3 times as many as it does now. This is Japan's untapped "nonprofit potential."
