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I've somewhat seen this coming, although not with Panasonic directly. Korean and Chinese goods, and even American with Apple, are eating into the sales of Japanese products.

What sort of brands are owned by Panasonic these days? I know that Sanyo is owned by Panasonic. Are there any more?

According to wikipedia, they also manufacture under Technics.

Interesting that they say most of those lost jobs will be outside Japan.

There are a few different types of employees in Japan. Most people want a '正社員', (Seishain) or full company employee position.

Seishain's are notoriously difficult and expensive to fire, even if they are in no way productive.

To get around this, many companies have increased their reliance on contractors, or 派遣, which can be let go pretty easily.

Panasonic could be slicing a large part of their japanese workforce as well by not renewing these contracts, and just not reporting on it, perhaps because of the bad press in japan such measures would generate.

Panasonic to cut 40,000 workers