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The story
A poster on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyō G” (Live/Streaming Discussion) board started a thread saying that, now in his 50s, he has never held a job since graduating junior high school and keeps failing part-time job interviews. Living with his parents and with no savings, he says he’s now being forced to find work as his parents grow older. Other users questioned what he’d been doing with his life all this time, while also floating concrete job leads like trucking and security work. Meanwhile, his hoped-for annual salary of 5 million yen drew pushback, with some pointing out that even many hardworking members of the “Employment Ice Age” generation never reach that figure — calling it unrealistic — and the thread grew into a broader debate about just how brutal the job market really is.
What people said
It's driving me insane
Never worked a single day in my life
That's just not gonna fly
What are you even saying
It's not gonna work?
That's about average income though
Me: "I'll help you out!"
Security company: "You're rejected."
What is this
That shouldn't happen for traffic control duty
Maybe for facility security since that's popular, but not this
But 3.5 million might still be within reach
Skill up and you could hit 7 million by 60
What exactly am I supposed to do to "skill up"?
Seems like you'd have money and housing problems
I've been holed up at my parents' place (a hikikomori)
My parents are getting close to dying so I've started thinking I need to get a job
They don't have any assets either
The average person has been working nonstop this whole time
It's basically an obligation
Well, now that you put it that way, I guess so
Guess I have no choice but to accept a below-average life
Yeah, that's fair
5 million was just my "wouldn't it be lucky to get this much✌" number
A proper return to society isn't realistic, so just get by little by little
Would something like Adecco work?
Absolutely not
Not a chance
Even though your parents keep getting older
My parents are close to dying too so I'm starting to panic
Our place is rented, we've got nothing resembling assets, not even a car
Just sitting through the interviews must be rough
The atmosphere's gotta be absolute hell
I go home feeling miserable every single time
and still did nothing all this time, right?
Panicking now is too little too late
I didn't see it coming
When I was young I just zoned out watching anime and playing games without a thought in my head
Skilled trade, driving, sales, cooking?
You've got none of those?
Seriously, nothing at all
but every year we get a few guys where you think "how has this old man even survived to this age"
And they're all doing fine, living their lives
What kind of job is it?
Oh really?
I thought everyone on NanJ made like 15 million a year
I can't handle brutal hours
I'm already in my 50s here
That's the job people have killed themselves over
Yeah, I totally lost the parent lottery
But there's no point saying that now
Not blaming your parents for it is actually pretty admirable
Getting fed by your parents until 50 is basically the jackpot — meanwhile they hit the total loser jackpot on the kid lottery
Background and Key Points of Debate
The poster says that despite having no work history and only a junior-high-school education, he’s been rejected even from fields like security and temp staffing that are generally considered easy to enter without experience. The thread split between a harsh view that he’s simply been coasting through life, and a more sympathetic take that the combination of being middle-aged, jobless, and without work history genuinely makes finding employment difficult. Opinions diverged over whether this comes down to the poster’s own lack of effort, or a structural problem rooted in age, education, and job history. It’s also worth noting that comments about Ice Age generation salary levels are just one opinion voiced in the thread, not something backed by verified statistics.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyō G) thread “A 50-something junior-high grad, still jobless, still can’t land a job.”
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