世論 What Japan Thinks

Let’s end the year on a low point, by looking at a recent survey from iShare into how 2009 was financially.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 24th of December 2009 505 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.6% of the sample were male, 30.7% in their twenties, 33.3% in their thirties, and 36.0% in their forties.

2009 was pretty horrendous for me – I recently got my end of year tax summary which showed that my salary was down close to 10% due to both stealth cuts through the bonus system and a renegotation of the overtime system which results in more money in my monthly pay-packet but less in the bonus. Also this year our mortgage discount rate ran out, which was another few percentage off the family budget. On the What Japan Thinks front, AdSense revenue has never recovered from two years ago when it suddenly died for reasons that were never too clear. Traffic is about double from then, but click-through and earnings per click are down. I’ve never really managed to understand affiliate advertising, despite many attempts…

Research results

Q1: Are you currently employed? (Including part-time, casual work, etc) (Sample size=505)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=219
Yes	77.4%	82.2%	71.2%
No	22.6%	17.8%	28.8%

Q2: Compared to last year, have you had more breathing space in your day-to-day finances? (Sample size=505)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=219
Very much more	2.4%	2.4%	2.3%
A little more	21.4%	22.4%	20.1%
A little less	43.2%	42.0%	44.7%
A lot less	33.1%	33.2%	32.9%

Q3: Compared to last year, how is this year’s household income? (Sample size=505)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=219
Much more	1.4%	1.4%	1.4%
A little more	13.7%	14.7%	12.3%
About the same	33.7%	31.5%	36.5%
A little less	29.5%	28.0%	31.5%
A lot less	21.8%	24.5%	18.3%

Q4: Compared to this year, how do you think next year’s household income will be? (Sample size=505)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=219
Much more	2.2%	2.4%	1.8%
A little more	14.1%	15.7%	11.9%
About the same	43.8%	39.9%	48.9%
A little less	24.0%	24.5%	23.3%
A lot less	16.0%	17.5%	14.2%

Q5: Do you think there is a possibility of your family’s main breadwinner being made redundant, etc, next year? (Sample size=505)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=219
Very much so	16.0%	15.7%	16.4%
A little	43.4%	43.4%	43.4%
None	40.6%	40.9%	40.2%

Q6: In order to increase salary, do you plan to look for work, change jobs next year? (Sample size=505)

	All	Male N=286	Female N=219	Employed N=391	Unemployed N=114
Yes	5.9%	6.3%	5.5%	4.6%	10.5%
Currently investigating	20.4%	17.5%	24.2%	18.7%	26.3%
No, but might investigate	45.3%	45.8%	44.7%	49.4%	31.6%
No, not at all	28.3%	30.4%	25.6%	27.4%	31.6%