**: China Europe Business Review is authorized by Wu Qiang.
The most common "small advertisements" on the streets of Japan are usually posted on the doors of restaurants and restaurants, with the two striking kanji "求人" written on them. Unlike the Chinese word for help, the Japanese word for "asking for help" means recruitment. However, most of the employees recruited in this way are part-time workers, known as arubyado (or part-time in Japanese), which means part-time and part-time workers.
Like flexible employment, which has become popular in China in recent years, Japan's job market is divided into two types: "regular employment" and "flexible employment," but they bluntly refer to the latter as "informal employment."
Informal employees in the catering industryThe proportion is more than eighty percent
In the Japanese workplace, "full-time employees" are often referred to as regular employment, and this form of employment has three characteristics: the first is that there is no contract period, which can be understood as a lifetime employment contractThe second is full-time work, and there is no geographical and position limit, employees need to have a "I am a brick of the company, need to move" work mentality;The third is that the company directly hires the company, rather than entrusting it to a third party.
Employees who are regularly employed are generally employed for life, and as long as the employee does not resign, the company will generally not take the initiative to terminate the employee. It's a bit like the Japanese version of "in-system" work. However, there is still a large part of the Japanese employment market that is "non-regular" and "extra-systematic" work.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's Reiwa 5-Year Labor Economic Analysis Report defines "irregular employment" as "any form of employment that does not have a formal labor contract, including workers other than regular employees, such as temporary workers, contract workers, part-time workers, dispatch workers, etc." In many cases, employment contracts are signed for short periods, and each person's work style, such as hours worked and days worked, varies from person to person. ”
It is important to note that not all part-time and part-time employees are non-regular employees, but a large number of them are contract workers (called "contract employees" in Japan). Contractors usually have a contract with the company for a limited period of work, job responsibilities and a limited area, and they work eight hours a day, five days a week, just like regular employees, but they usually commute to and from work on time and are not obligated to work free overtime like regular employees.
In addition to contract members, there are three main types of people in Japan who choose flexible employment: one is college students who have not yet entered the society, and they have to earn living expenses and pocket money by working part-time;One is housewives, who use their leisure time to work a few hours a day to support their families;There is also a category of retired uncles and aunts, many of whom will continue to work as long as they are still in good health and save a little more pension money for themselves.
Japan has been in an economic downturn for a long time, and many companies are willing to use more temporary and part-time workers in many jobs in order to save expenses and make ends meet, so as to reduce the cost of labor compensation. The most typical is the catering and retail industry, the peaks and troughs of customer flow are very obvious, if all the regular members are employed, there is not enough manpower when they are busy, and everyone has no work to do when they are free, resulting in a lot of waste.
These industries employ a large number of non-regular employees, and employees only need to work for a few hours during busy hours. According to a statistical report on informal employment in various industries in Japan, the proportion of informal employees in the food service industry ranks first, as high as 81%.This is followed by lifestyle-related services and retail, with 50 per cent and 43 per cent of informal employees, respectivelyThe proportion of informal employees in the health, education and market research sectors also reached more than 30 per cent.
The lowest percentage of informal employees is in the mining sector, which is only 19%；The informal employment rate in the construction, utilities and communications sectors is also low, at around 5%. These are industries with relatively high barriers to entry in Japan, and due to the lack of competition, their awareness of cost control is far less than that of the service industry, so they do not use temporary workers much.
Flexible staffing eases enterprises"Overemployment" anxiety
The age group of non-regular workers in Japan is concentrated in the age group of 24 years old and over 60 years old, and the majority of them are school students and retireesAmong the 24-60-year-olds of informal workers, about 25 per cent are men and 75 per cent are women, some of whom are unable to find regular employment, but many more choose flexible work because of "good working conditions, easy commuting" or even hobbies.
In Japanese TV dramas, it is not uncommon to see young students doing odd jobs at convenience stores or restaurants, which are generally settled by the hour, and the minimum wage in the Tokyo area is 1,113 yen, and in some places you can get 1,500 2,000 yen"**This is enough for 2 or 3 full meals at Yoshinoya or McDonald's. The cashiers and tally clerks you see in supermarkets are mostly housewives and retirees, who only work for a few hours during peak traffic hours. I once met an 80-year-old man in a supermarket who was doing all the work of sorting out the trolleys by himself, and the motivation was daunting.
In many restaurants and retail industries, only 1 or 2 staff members may have 1 or 2 regular employees in a store with more than 10 employees, and the remaining 8 or 10 employees are non-regular employees, including several contract workers who work regularly every day and a few temporary workers who are dispatched by the dispatch company according to business needs.
In 1986, Japan promulgated the Worker Dispatch Law, which opened up the Japanese labor dispatch market, but the types of dispatched work were limited to a small scopeAfter the law was amended in 1990, most jobs in Japan could be dispatched except for certain types of work, which greatly promoted the development of the flexible employment market in JapanIn addition, as the Japanese economy fell into recession after 1990, many Japanese companies began to worry about overemployment in the face of economic uncertainty, so they began to control the number of regular employees, and used temporary and dispatched workers as much as possible where they could be employed. As a result of these factors, the proportion of contractors in the Japanese employment market is now close to 40%.
If contract, part-time, and part-time workers are included, the proportion of non-regular employment in Japan is slightly higher than that of China. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2021, there were about 200 million people in flexible employment in China, accounting for about 14% of the total Chinese populationAccording to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the number of non-regular employees in Japan at the end of 2022 was 21.01 million, close to 17% of the total Japanese population.
shrouded inunder the demographic crisisLow unemployment
Due to the characteristics of Japan's aging and declining birthrate, although it has 12.5 billion people, but the working population is about 69.11 million, accounting for only 55% of the total population;Among them, 9.9 million are business owners or company directors, 35.88 million are formally employed, 21.01 million are informally employed, and 1.98 million are unemployed, with an unemployment rate of only 28%。
Some people may be curious, isn't it said that the Japanese economy is bad?Why is the unemployment rate so low?
Although the Japanese economy has been stagnant for a long time, due to the aging population and the declining birthrate and negative population growth, the society is generally in a situation of shortage of manpower, so it is easy to find a job in Japan, and most of the unemployment is frictional unemployment, except for those who rarely give up their employment(Temporary job losses experienced by job seekers when looking for a new job or changing positions).
Over the past 20 years, Japan's total population has increased from 12.7 billion, down to 1. in 20222.5 billion, a reduction of 2 million people. At the same time, Japan has entered an aging society with a declining birthrate, with the working population of 15 to 64 falling from 85.2 million to 72.8 million, a decrease of 12.4 million in the working population.
But over the past 20 years, Japan's employment situation and negative population growth have looked contradictory. In 2002, the number of employed people in Japan was 49.4 million, while in 2022, the number of employed people in Japan was 56.89 million, an increase of 7.49 million.
Why is the number of people employed increasing while the population is decreasing?There are two main reasons for this, the first is the increase in female workers, and the second is the increase in foreign workers.
Before the 90s of the last century, Japan was in a period of rapid economic growth, and most Japanese families were like the cartoons "Crayon Shin-chan" and "Robot Cat", where the father went to work in the company to make money, and the mother was only responsible for being a full-time housewife at home. After the 90s, Japan entered a long-term economic downturn, and family income decreased, and many stay-at-home wives had to use their leisure time to work outside the home to support their families.
As can be seen from the data, there has been a net increase of 6.08 million in the number of female workers over the past 20 years, and 67 per cent of them are in informal employment. In 2002, the number of non-regular employees in Japan was 14.51 million, accounting for 29% of the total employed populationBy 2022, the number of non-regular workers in Japan reached 21.01 million, accounting for 37% of the total employed population. In 20 years, there has been an increase of 6.5 million people in flexible employment, 63 per cent of whom are women. In addition, the number of women employed in the regular sector increased by 1.97 million from 10.52 million in 2002 to 12.49 million.
The participation of female workers does not completely alleviate the plight of Japan's labor force shortage, and in recent years, Japan has been actively recruiting foreign workers. According to the Reiwa 5-Year Labor Economic Analysis Report, in 2008, the number of foreign workers in Japan was 4860,000, a number that has tripled or quadrupled in the last decade or so, reaching 1.82 million in 2022, with the largest number coming from Vietnam with 460,000;This was followed by China and the Philippines with 390,000 and 210,000 respectively.
In addition to the introduction of a large number of ordinary skilled workers, Japan** is also very active in issuing "manager" and "highly talented" visas to overseas people. The Japan Immigration Bureau has a high level of talent introduction point scale, the higher the education level and the stronger the ability to run a business, the higher the score, and the cumulative number of points can obtain a Japanese status of residence. If the applicant is under the age of 30 or has more than one minor child accompanying him/her, he or she will receive special points, which is also a sign of Japan's huge demographic crisis.
Survey of Employment Behaviour of Young People:40% have no intention of working full-time
With the participation of a large number of non-regular workers, the average number of working hours per person in Japan is decreasing year by year. Because the vast majority of informal workers are part-time or hourly workers, the working hours are generally between 2 and 8 hours a day, coupled with Japan's attention to the phenomenon of "death by overwork", Japan's per capita working hours have decreased by 13% in the past 20 years, and the annual working hours have dropped from more than 1,900 hours in the past to more than 1,600 hours now.
Many of Japan's policies tend to protect vulnerable groups. In response to the fact that informal workers are a relatively disadvantaged group in the employment market, Japan** has implemented a comprehensive strategy to support informal workers, including promoting the transition from informal to regular employment, promoting equal pay for equal work, improving working conditions, and ensuring equal opportunities for skills development and career development.
In Japan, for example, the hourly minimum wage is 702 yen in 2002 and is now 1,113 yen, an increase of 58% over the past 20 yearsIn contrast, the wages of regular employees in Japan have not changed much in the past 20 years. According to the Basic Statistical Survey of Wage Structure conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the average monthly wage of full-time workers in Japan in 2022 was 31180,000 yen (about 15,769 yuan), which is only about 10,000 yen higher than the level in 2002. In contrast, the wage increases of informal workers are much higher than those of regular employees.
The informal employment model is changing Japanese society in a subtle way. In Japan, a lifetime employment system was once prevalent, and it was normal for office workers to retire from one job, but now more and more young people do not plan to do just one job for the rest of their lives. A recent survey on the employment behaviour of young people shows that 40% of respondents have no intention of working full-time, and only 3% have no intention of working part-time.
In fact, due to the narrowing gap between the rich and the poor in society and the increase in the disposable financial assets of their parents, young people have become less money-conscious, and they no longer put "income" in the first place because of the same criteria for finding a job as they do for choosing a mate. Between a 9-to-8 job and a freer lifestyle, many people are willing to choose the latter, even if it costs less. There are also many people who focus their lives on their personal interests and hobbies, and flexible employment allows them to give up more time and energy to their hobbies.