世論 What Japan Thinks

This is the second in a pair of separate but related surveys; this one being a lighter look at for what reasons do people change jobs by goo Ranking, with the previous by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight being a serious look at the job hunting market. Between the 20th and 24th of July 2007 an unspecified number of people who wanted to change jobs were asked the question.

I don’t really think there are too many differences between the reasons for dissatisfaction in Japan when compared to the West.
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This is the first in a pair of separate but related surveys; this one by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight is a serious look at the job hunting market, with the next being a lighter look at for what reasons do people change jobs by goo Ranking.

Demographics

Over two weeks from the 13th to 27th of July 2007 3,387 people chose to complete a public survey offered through the menus of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone service. 58.9% of the sample was female, 3.8% in their teens, 29.8% in their twenties, 43.2% in their thirties, 20.4% in their forties, and 2.8% aged fifty or older.

I don’t know if it’s the self-selecting nature of the sample, but there seems to be a rather larger than expected percentage of the population interested in new jobs.

Where I mention “full-time, regular job”, I mean those currently unemployed, whether due to redundancy, re-entering the labour market, or those seeking their first job after leaving education.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into how people rate the company they work for. The fieldwork was conducted on the 14th of February, with 330 people from their online monitor group successfully completing a private internet-based questionnaire. It’s probably useful to cross-reference this with my recent translation of a survey on middle-age job opportunities.

Demographics

The 330 people were all employed in private industry, with an overwhelming 95.5% male. All of the sample was aged 30 or older, with 35.8% in their thirties, 52.7% in their forties, 10.6% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

My degree of satisfaction (or otherwise, as the case may be) with my employer is documented to some extent in my weekly newsletter, available by either entering your email address in the box below, or by visiting the newsletter archives on Google. Only recently have I started to put some effort into resolving matters, but I am seeing possible signs that something positive may happen.

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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the subject of job opening for mid-career job-seekers. At the start of February they interviewed 330 people between the ages of 30 and 69 employed in the private sector in some sort of personnel-related capacity. 69.4% of the sample was male, 41.5% in their thirties, 38.5% in their forties, 17.9% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

As you have no doubt heard, Japanese firms tend to employ people under the assumption by both the employer and employee that it will be a job for life, although recently this trend has been changing, due to both firms wishing to reduce headcount and to people wanting to change. I think it wasn’t until about five years ago that my employer (one of the largest in Japan) first asked people if they wished to take early retirement or redundancy. The founder is regarded as a god of management who I suspect might be turning in his grave (or whatever the equivalent cliché is for the cremated) if he knew that one of the newest factories is mainly employing casual contract labour. I better shut up now before I get sacked…

UPDATE: Thanks to fukumimi for clearing up a rather fundamental mistake in my initial translation!
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