What ㈸ means
It encloses Japanese 労, meaning labor or toil.
As of 2026, Japanese conversion references list it for tate-chu-yoko (縦中横): placing a short item horizontally within vertical text.
The wider set of enclosed East Asian characters drew on existing computer-character standards, including Japan's JIS X 0208:1990, CNS 11643, and company character lists.
Part of the collection
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
2Can ㈸ mean labor union?
Yes, in context. As of 2026, Japanese dictionary and symbol references support ㈸ as shorthand for 労働組合 (“labor union”); elsewhere, read its inner 労 as labor or toil.
Why does ㈸ become (労)?
That is its compatibility expansion. Unicode conversion can expose the parentheses and 労 as separate characters without changing the reading.
More like this
9
How to type or find ㈸
- Also called
- parenthesized 労 · fullwidth parenthesized 労
- Search it as
- parenthesized labor · labor symbol in parentheses · Japanese labor union · labor union shorthand · 労組 · 労働組合 · 括弧付き労
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
㈸\3238Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.