Recently, Japan announced that this year's employment rate for university students reached 98.1%, marking a historic high since 1997.
Over the past three years, Japan's university student employment rate has continued to rise, surpassing pre-pandemic levels this year, signaling Japan's economy officially entering a recovery track.
Behind this high employment rate reflects strong demand from major Japanese corporations for talent.
To attract and retain excellent employees, companies are offering generous benefits:
- First, there's a signing bonus as high as 1 million yen (approximately $8,000 USD), which is certainly a significant enticement.
- Secondly, employees are guaranteed up to 129 days of annual leave, with both men and women eligible for parental leave, and overtime pay calculated down to the minute.
- Additionally, for fresh graduates without relevant experience, a policy of "accepting graduates from all disciplines" means companies provide comprehensive training and development opportunities, even for those starting from scratch.
Several Japanese media outlets have described this phenomenon as Japan entering a potential multi-year employment "super-seller's market."
For Japanese university graduates about to enter society, this is undoubtedly good news, finally alleviating past worries about employment and offering more choices and opportunities.
However, just a few years ago, the Japanese job market was starkly different.
After the burst of the economic bubble in the 1990s, Japan experienced the so-called "lost decade," followed by the global financial crisis in 2008.
Long-term economic stagnation led Japan into a "employment ice age" lasting for 20 years, with youth employment rates plummeting from 81.3% in 1991 to 55.1% in 2003.
During that prolonged period, securing a stable job was almost a luxury for young people, and unemployment and layoffs became the norm, forcing young people to endure significant economic and psychological pressure to keep their jobs.
However, now the situation has fundamentally changed.
Japan's employment rate has rebounded to historical highs, not only due to increased job opportunities but also because of a decrease in the number of young people in the labor market.
Since 2005, Japan has faced increasingly severe aging problems, with the population aged 65 and over exceeding 20%, making labor supply no longer as abundant as before.
Similar to Japan, other countries in East Asia, such as China, face similar challenges: difficulty in employment, marriage, high work pressure, and widespread phenomena of overwork.
These issues not only affect social stability and economic development but also directly lead to continued declines in birth rates.
As industrial automation advances, more and more traditional jobs are being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence.
This partly explains why Japan's employment rate can remain at a high level even without emerging industries or new markets: because modern economies require relatively fewer human resources, and technological advancements enable machines to handle more repetitive tasks.
Overall, Japan's experience tells us that both social and economic development are subject to cyclical fluctuations.
Peak and trough alternation is the norm in the economy, and we need to maintain an optimistic and open mindset, believing that in cyclical adjustments, we can also find opportunities for our own development.
In this process, the quantity of population and the allocation of social resources are important issues.
Japan's example suggests that changes in population structure directly affect the supply and demand relationship in the labor market, which further impacts social stability and economic development.
Therefore, when contemplating future development directions, we need to focus not only on technological progress and economic policy formulation but also on the construction of population policies and social security systems.
Only by achieving a balance between people and technology, and between economy and society, can we achieve long-term sustainable development goals.
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