Gloom deepens in Japan

Japan’s economic problems deepened in April, with unemployment rising and industrial production and wage-earner spending dropping, the government said in Tokio today.

The barrage of dismal figures in part reflected seasonal trends, but still underscored the troubled economy’s continuing failure to emerge from an 11-year downturn, the deepest since the end of the Second World War.

The jobless rate rose to a near-record 4.8% in April, the first increase in three months. The unemployment rate peaked at 4.9% in December and January, but had dropped to 4.7% in February and March.

Japan’s economic troubles come as growth in the United States in Europe has slowed, shrinking the market for the exports on which Japan depends.

Industrial production fell 1.7% in April, the second straight decline in production at the country’s factories. The figure fell 2.1% in March, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.

Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Heizo Takenaka told Parliament that structural problems in the Japanese economy have been exacerbated by the US slowdown.

‘‘The effects of the US economy on Japan have been stronger than expected, which is why the (Japanese) economy is currently weakening further,’’ Takenaka said.

A chronic weak spot in the economy, spending, also suffered in April. Spending by wage earners declined for the first time in five months, falling 4.4% percent from a year earlier.

The decline was the largest since December 1999, when spending plummeted 4.7%, the government said, blaming the decline in part on falling purchases of cars and other expensive consumer durables.

The figures came as the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who took office in April, works on an overhaul of the economy that is expected to worsen conditions in the short-run.

Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said today that job conditions were ‘‘in a serious state’’, and he refrained from making any predictions about when the economy would improve.