Did COVID-19 deteriorate mismatch in the Japanese labor market?

We take a fresh analytical look at the developments in the Japanese labour market over the last two decades and provide answers to three key questions: first, was regular employment replaced by non-regular employment on an aggregate level in general and at the expense of younger generations in particular? Second, how do today’s labour market outcomes compare to the heydays of the Japanese economy, i.e. to the late 1980s? Third, have wage gaps between men and women as well as between regular and non-regular employees increased, stayed the same, or shrunk? Contrary to both public perception and many research opinions, we find that the Japanese labour market as a whole has produced normatively positive outcomes of an unexpected magnitude in a long-term perspective. By 2010, employment has expanded beyond the structural frame of 1988 both in its non-standard and in its standard segment. We further find that the increase in non-regular employment was predominantly due to an increase in labour demand, mirrored by a significantly narrowed wage gap between non-standard and standard employment. Lastly, we find that women have made substantial inroads into the labour market, both in terms of regular employment and real wage development.

Introduction While the Japanese public may have paid relatively little attention to issues of social inequalities and rising poverty until fairly recently, as the introduction to this volume has argued, the case seems to be, on the face of it, very different with regard to inequalities in the Japanese labour market. Differences in employment status related to, for example, the industry or size of the employer, have been hallmarks of Japanese employment practices for a long time (see also the chapter by Lechevalier in this volume). Consequently, young jobseekers have always been acutely aware not only of relative differences in pay and corporate welfare and but also of the long-term repercussions with regard to employment and social status of different jobs. Moreover, the Japanese labour market has always been highly gendered: until recently women were widely perceived as housewives who support male breadwinner spouses but participated only occasionally in the labour market themselves (Osawa 2002). Hence, it could be argued that the Japanese labour market has always been marked by significant inequalities and that current debates in Japan reflect a growing public interest in the issue rather than a genuinely new development.

ABSTRACT. The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between sustainable and competitive transition in enterprise performance management and measurement and the changing role of women in the Japanese labour market. The work correlates the proportion of female employees in leadership positions in relation to the sector type, firm age, profits and encouragement of women’s participation in the labour force over six significant periods. The study also examines correlations between the encouragement of women’s participation in the labour force and high productivity, improvement of work-life balance and higher integration of female staff in the workforce. A questionnaire survey was conducted in 152 Japanese companies as part of the research. Non-parametric tests and exploratory data analysis were used for evaluation. The linear-by-linear test was applied to ordinal categories to determine the trend between the proportion of female employees in leadership positions and the encouragement of women’s participation in the labour force. The results indicate that partial changes have occurred as far as women in the Japanese labour market are concerned and confirm that working women are faced with persistent obstacles in terms of higher integration of female staff in the workforce and improvement of work-life balance. A future research direction worth considering is a study focused on other countries in Asia, comparing the findings with this paper.

Job tasks and wages in the Japanese labor market: Evidence from wage functions

Implicit contracts in the Japanese labor market

Competition and Cooperation in Japanese Labour Markets explains the salient features of the Japanese Labour Market and their evolution through time. The key idea is integrated segmentation: on the demand side, within the educational system; on the supply side, through the type of labour contracts binding workers to firms and firms to workers. Demand and supply-side segmentation exists in a number of countries. Peculiar to Japan is the way demand and supply segmentation overlap and the muting of the wage and income differentials which segmentation generates. Being segmented on both supply and demand sides as it is, the Japanese labour market is highly competitive; however, because it is also integrated, cooperation is also deeply rooted within it.

Currently, the Japanese labor market is facing an acute labor shortage due to its demographic crisis. The severity of this situation has reached such a proportion that Japan appears unable to address it internally. Hence, Japan is in dire need of foreign workers to keep its massive industries running. On the other hand, Bangladesh is witnessing a demographic dividend with a massive pool of working- age population. Therefore, the Japanese labor market holds great potential for young and skilled Bangladeshi workers. This qualitative research analyzes the current scenario of Japan’s labor market and identifies opportunities and challenges for Bangladeshi workers. It reveals that a lack of cultural orientation, poor command of Japanese language and appropriate skills are major predicaments for Bangladeshi workforce in the Japanese labor market. This study recommends collaborative action immediately by the governments of Bangladesh and Japan, sending organizations (SOs) of Bangladesh and Japanese companies as well as training centers for skill development of interested workforce and removing policy barriers for the export of labor to Japan from Bangladesh. Social Science Review, Vol. 41(2), December 2024, pp. 57-82

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the changing situation of the Japanese working women since the beginning of the 1990s in the 1990s in a Regulationist perspective. We enrich the concept of Toyotist wage-labour nexus by taking into account the gender. It means, we do not restrain the analysis of working women to the labour market, but we also study the sphere of labour force reproduction. To sum up, we point out a phenomenon of "polarization" among the Japanese working women. Namely at least two groups among female workers are emerging : one is constituted by regular workers, who are treated (almost) similarly to their male counterparts, another one by part-timers, who experience poor working conditions. Another noticeable finding is the change of composition in the differential structure of the Japanese labour market : recently the sex is not the main criterion to understand the inequalities in Japan. It means that the concept of segmentation should be seriously amended to lead to a more satisfying theoretical analysis of the inequalities between men and women in Japan since the beginning of the 1990s.

The motivations underlying the pursuit of college prestige in Japan presumes a labor market that rewards workers according to the quality of the college that they attended. Yet studies that examine the relationship between college quality and earnings in Japan remain few and are riddled with shortcomings. This article examines the returns to college education among Japanese men using a 1995 cross‐sectional data set. I find that college quality significantly improves earnings. My findings confirm that college quality plays a crucial role in shaping incentives and earnings in the Japanese labor market.

This article investigates the roles of human and social capital played in the Japanese labor market. Our research question is whether they interact to accelerate or decelerate each other to provide first jobs of a long duration. Based on the literature, we focus on the bonding functions of friends and relatives. Using the 2005 Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey Data, we measure human capital by educational attainment (college education) and social capital by job search methods (using friends or relatives). The dependent variable is the hazard rate of turnover from the first job. We find that social capital especially benefits those with low human capital (high school graduates). When friends or relatives introduce workers to jobs, high school graduates tended to stay longer in their first jobs and had a lower turnover than college graduates did. This means that social capital decelerated effects of human capital. Therefore, in the Japanese labor market, social capital plays a complementary role in mitigating educational disadvantage.

International Labour ReviewVolume 144, Issue 4 p. 451-472 Women in the Japanese labour market, 1947–2003: A brief survey Junko KUMAMOTO-HEALEY, Junko KUMAMOTO-HEALEY *Oita University, Japan. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Junko KUMAMOTO-HEALEY, Junko KUMAMOTO-HEALEY *Oita University, Japan. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 22 September 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2005.tb00577.xCitations: 7AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume144, Issue4December 2005Pages 451-472 RelatedInformation

The existence and mechanisms of ethnic discrimination in hiring decisions have been extensively studied, but the following two gaps remain: non-Western societies and taste-based discrimination. In this contribution, we investigate whether ethnic discrimination and its mechanisms are similarly observable in the Japanese labour market. Additionally, to reflect Becker’s initial idea, we decompose the sources of taste-based discrimination into employers’ preferences and societal preferences (i.e. perceived co-workers’ and customers’ preferences) and determine which and how preferences drive ethnic discrimination. We conducted factorial survey experiments via web surveys in Japan targeting HR professionals/employers working in almost all industries. The results show that immigrants are severely disadvantaged in hiring. Decomposing taste-based discrimination shows that only employers’ preferences contribute to discrimination, whereas societal preferences do not influence discrimination. However, the magnitude of the effects of employers’ preferences on discrimination depends on societal preferences as follows: hiring decisions are less dependent on employer attitudes towards socially preferred groups than those towards socially non-preferred groups. This study suggests that ethnic discrimination is observable even outside of Western societies and that taste-based discrimination is a more complicated process than expected in previous studies.

The rate of unemployment in Japanese labor market has shown a rather conspicuous trend of increase in the last few years. Following the discontinuous increase from the low one percent level to two percent in the wake of the first oil crisis, the rate has risen again substantially now, close to three percent since the beginning of 1983, although it lowered slightly recently-perhaps reflecting, sluggishly and only mildly, the recent economic recovery.

Comment on “Inequality in Japan”

In his chapter, "The Japanese Labor Market" (with the collaboration of Konosuke Odaka), in Asia's New Giant (Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky, eds., Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1976), Professor Walter Galenson seems to view labor-management relations almost as a zero-sum game supported by a fierce adversary spirit on both sides. If a pattern of labor-management relations works well for management, it must by definition bode ill for labor. Since Galenson's heart lies with labor, he would not accept a pattern of labor-management relations as reasonable unless he were sure that all of its major aspects had been desired and promoted by labor unions and imposed on the reluctant management. Considering "permanent commitment" to be the essence of the Japanese labor-management relations, Galenson suggests "that, for a number of reasons, it has been a completely rational policy in terms of costs and benefits for large Japanese employers, and that although workers welcomed the job security that it brought, particularly in the decade after World War II, the main reason for its survival has been economic efficiency" (p. 619). Save for this overlap of worker and management interests in the Japanese employment system, Galenson has almost no kind words to say about the benefits of the system to workers or unions. "Japanese working people," he says (p. 655), "do not enjoy a standard of living consonant with the nation's per capita income. Further, it is our hypothesis that to a considerable degree this has resulted from the inability of the labor movement to exercise any real influence on national economic policy." One (the fourth) of his conclusions reads: "…. because of economic and political weakness, the Japanese labor movement has been unable to secure for its members a level of social welfare or a degree of industrial democracy consistent with the nation's level of development" (p. 669).