Mar. 10--TOKYO -- Sadaharu Umeya has a full-time job at a publishing company in Tokyo, but he mostly spends his days now poring over job ads as he prepares for a layoff notice that may come anytime soon.

"With how things look now, I don't know what's around the corner," Umeya, a 33-year-old worker from Chiba Prefecture, said as he walked out of a "Hello Work" public job center.

Umeya, who has worked at the company for over six years, said it may be his turn to leave after many of the temporary workers were laid off in face of battered earnings from slumping magazine sales.

"My company may be gone by tomorrow," he said.

Until now, permanent employees like Umeya have largely escaped the recent wave of massive job cuts in Japan, while the pain has mostly been borne by temporary workers, who now make up about one-third of the country's workforce.

But that thick shield over full-time workers is starting to crumble as the nation sinks deeper into its worst economic crisis in decades.

The Japanese economy shrank at its fastest pace in about 35 years in the October to December quarter of last year, falling at an annualized real 12.7 percent from the previous quarter, while industrial production fell 10 percent in January from a month earlier, dropping at a record pace.

"In order to address such a big shock, there's probably no choice but to cut regular employees," said Yoshiki Shinke, a senior economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

"Since economic conditions deteriorated at such rapid speeds, employment adjustments will also need to be made fast," Shinke said.

Already, NEC Corp. has announced cuts of over 10,000 jobs, Sony Corp. 8,000 jobs, Pioneer Corp. about 6,000 jobs, and Nissan Motor Co. 4,000 jobs -- all among the long-cherished regular workforce.

"Companies are being pretty dry, taking measures with the worst-case scenario in mind," said Takehito Takahara, a manager at Recruit Agent Co., who advises job seekers in the electronics and machinery sectors.

"It's certainly not like Japanese companies in the past, but that's necessary to survive," he said.

Job vacancies at the recruiting agency plummeted nearly 60 percent in February from a year earlier even as more people sought its help in finding increasingly rare employment opportunities.

Economists at Daiwa Institute of Research predict about 2.7 million people will lose their jobs by the year-end, which would represent a pace of labor adjustment that is about three times faster than after the burst of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s.