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The story
Many people who entered the workforce during Japan’s “employment ice age” after the bubble economy collapsed are still stuck in unstable, non-regular jobs today. On ABEMA Prime, a debate erupted over how deregulation—including revisions to the Worker Dispatch Law—fueled the rise of non-regular employment, with some arguing “government policy at the time expanded it” while others pinned the blame on individual “self-responsibility.” On a 5ch thread, voices from that generation (“Back then, becoming a civil servant was the only way out”) sat alongside accounts like “I’m from the same ice age generation, but I worked at a black company and could only save 3,000 yen,” highlighting the gap between lived experience and calls for self-responsibility.
Published 9/23 (Wed) 11:00
ABEMA TIMES
Many of those who entered society during the employment ice age after the bubble burst remain stuck in unstable non-regular employment today. Amid revisions to the Worker Dispatch Law and other changes that expanded the ranks of non-regular workers, sharp voices have clashed—some arguing “government policy at the time expanded non-regular employment,” others leveling harsh “self-responsibility” criticism at the workers themselves. ABEMA Prime held a discussion on the roots of this problem, where responsibility lies, and what support should look like going forward.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
>"7x the pay compared to Indonesia" — foreign workers in Kagoshima quadruple over 10 years, the reality of a region propping up an area whose population has dropped below 1.5 million
Even with this weak yen, apparently workers from the bottom rung in Indonesia can make 7x more by coming to Kagoshima.
Well, for people actually working properly in the big cities, they've probably already been overtaken almost across the board though.
Koizumi cut public works spending, and even major general contractors were going bankrupt back then.
There are quite a few college grads working as delivery drivers, and honestly I think that's a pretty solid choice.
I'm 53, went to a bottom-tier ("F-rank") university, but among my friends and their circles, there's basically nobody who's non-regular…
…says some unemployed guy with zero work history who just inherited a massive fortune and land from his parents. When a guy like that hits you with "self-responsibility" — like "if you're jealous, why didn't you just make the effort to live off unearned income?" — it makes me want to kill someone.
What even is this "self-responsibility" thing? "Not enough effort," whatever.
Gen Z is saying the exact same thing:
"Job hunting was easy for us, but even during the ice age, if you'd just tried hard, getting a job would've been easy too, right?"
The parents of the ice age generation are that very baby boomer generation.
Part-timers, temp workers, and fixed-term factory workers just got replaced by dispatch workers, that's all. There weren't enough seats to begin with, so it couldn't be helped.
Mostly agree, but at the same time they should've eased dismissal regulations for regular employees too.
The first company I joined was basically a yakuza front business. Well, it paid pretty well on commission though.
Creating jobs ("seats") is the government's job. Takenaka [Heizo, the economist behind labor deregulation] was incompetent on that front, but it's not really his fault.
That's about civil servant positions ("seats"). Even under the DPJ government, [Katsuya] Okada talked about cutting hiring numbers. Private-sector jobs come down to economic growth and respecting individual workers' rights, but in Japan there's a tendency to only recognize workers collectively, through unions.
That's "unrestricted warfare" (a Chinese military strategy concept meaning total, no-holds-barred conflict).
Don't act so proud about 3,000 yen.
3,000 yen is rough, lol.
I got fired up and thought, "I'll get my slinging and forklift licenses and cling on as a regular employee even at some bottom-tier warehouse!!"
But then: "Do you have practical experience?" "Even with the license, we don't have the spare capacity to train you from zero."
And I'd get turned away at the door. That's what it was like back then.
These days, with the labor shortage, it's: "Oh! You've got the license?! We've been waiting for you! You'll be fine just picking it up as you go!" — and you get hired on the spot.
Yeah, back then they'd hire carpenters who happened to have law licenses.
That's why you pick a field where your past experience actually counts. Mid-career regular hiring only takes people with experience. The only ones hired as regular employees without experience are new grads and young people.
Lol, you're straight up dissing the part-timer at my warehouse.
Even if you become a regular employee by the time you're middle-aged, you can't exactly start a family by then.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The Worker Dispatch Law was revised in 1999, lifting restrictions to allow dispatch labor across most job categories in principle, and in 2004 dispatch work was further deregulated to include manufacturing. The employment ice age (roughly those who graduated between 1993 and 2004) overlapped with this period of deregulation, meaning the generation left out of the traditional new-graduate hiring track was especially likely to end up funneled into non-regular employment. Since around 2019, the government has pushed an “Ice Age Generation Support Program,” but its track record of converting workers to regular employment is considered limited. In the thread, criticism of Heizo Takenaka — who spearheaded the deregulation — clashes with “self-responsibility” arguments that focus on individual choices, making this an issue that doesn’t reduce neatly to simple right and wrong. One commonly misunderstood point: not everyone from the ice age generation remained non-regular — many did eventually move into regular employment as they aged — but the segment that reaches retirement age still non-regular faces a real looming problem of inadequate pensions and retirement savings, which remains an unresolved social security challenge.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Was the Expansion of ‘Non-Regular Employment’ That Plagues the Ice Age Generation Really a Bad Thing? Those Affected and Experts Push Back Against the ‘Self-Responsibility’ Argument.”
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