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The story
The mid-career hiring exam for national civil servants aimed at Japan’s “employment ice age” generation will run for three years, from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2028. Eligibility is broad, covering anyone born between April 2, 1966 and April 1, 1986. Applications for the fiscal 2026 round have already closed, and the first-stage written exam wrapped up on September 6, 2026. On the thread, some reported that about 40% of seats were empty on exam day, pushing the effective competition ratio even higher, while others pointed out that in practice only people with professional qualifications stand a real chance. Meanwhile, opinion was split by concerns that people who bounced between non-regular jobs and have gaps in their résumés are less likely to pass — raising doubts about whether the exam is actually helping the people who need it most.
The mid-career hiring exam for national civil servants targeting Japan’s “employment ice age” generation will be held over three years, from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2028.
Applications for the fiscal 2026 exam have already closed, and the first-stage exam concluded on September 6, 2026.
This article reviews the progress and upcoming schedule of the fiscal 2026 exam, along with the job duties, planned hiring numbers, and application figures for each exam category, and lays out what people hoping to take the fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2028 exams should start preparing now.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
You're straight-up bubble generation, dude
Even 3,000 is brutally competitive lol
This is just the government pretending to do something about the ice age generation.
The exam range is wider than the Pacific Ocean, so studying is pointless — it all comes down to the knowledge you've built up over your life.
Other way around. Only people with qualifications even have the right to apply in the first place. Anyone with no real skills gets rejected.
Early-'70s babies got hit with a double whammy: recession plus the baby-boom generation flooding the job market.
You wouldn't even get appointed as an interviewer in the first place.
That's a one-way ticket to a power-harassment lawsuit and a demotion ☺
Pull that in this day and age and you'll get sued and I'll walk away with the damages lol
Exactly this. If they're not hiring from the group with career gaps, this isn't ice-age relief at all.
Shouldn't we also think about the burden on current staff who'd have to train and manage incompetent hires?
It's stable, but hardly a "comeback" lol. The pay's only about twice welfare benefits, right? And you'd hit mandatory retirement before seniority raises get you anywhere near a decent salary.
And yet the ratio is this insane lol
Some of these people are basically grandpas and grandmas already lol
So I guess that makes me, born in 1969, part of the ice-age generation too lolol
How many tens of thousands are they hiring a year?
During the ice age, national and local governments joined the private sector in slashing civil-service hiring, and this was also the era when "personal responsibility" rhetoric spread widely under the banner of structural reform.
For example, at Hiroshima City Hall, general clerical positions for university graduates:
FY2005 hires: 2 people, ratio 279.0x ← 280x!
(Late ice-age cohort, early 40s now)
FY2015 hires: 168 people, ratio 5.4x
FY2024 hires: 280 people, ratio 2.3x
They count it as history, but they don't actually give it credit.
Re: #105
The worst case has to be Naha City's 2020 staff recruitment (ice-age quota). 1,879 people applied, and only 2 made it through in the end (940x ratio).
If you were born in fiscal 1966, you'd already be 61 by the time you're hired next spring. The mandatory retirement age for national civil servants is being phased up, but you'd still hit retirement at 65 by the end of fiscal 2031 — meaning you'd only get to work for 5 years.
I'm set to become the head of my neighborhood association starting the year after next, so I don't have time to be a public servant 🤣🤣🤣
Can't even land a cushy post-retirement gig (amakudari, the practice of ex-bureaucrats landing jobs in industries they used to oversee) — so long! (^^)/~~~
Background and key points of debate
This mid-career hiring exam is being run by the government over three years, fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2028, as part of its support measures for the “employment ice age” generation. The eligible age range spans roughly 20 years, covering anyone born between April 2, 1966 and April 1, 1986. When people talk about the “employment ice age generation,” they usually mean the cohort hit hardest — those who job-hunted around fiscal 2002, when the university graduate employment rate sank to about 63%, roughly people born 1977-1984. It’s easy to overlook that this exam’s eligibility actually stretches back to include people who entered the job market during the bubble economy. What divided the thread wasn’t so much the high competition ratio itself as the question of who actually benefits: commenters pointed out that people who kept steady full-time employment throughout their careers have an easier time passing, while those who bounced between non-regular jobs are at a disadvantage. In the past, some municipal “ice-age quota” hiring drives have seen competition ratios exceeding 200x to 900x, and this exam’s effective ratio has also shifted due to high no-show rates on written exam day.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread ‘5,116 Applicants This Year for the “National Civil Servant Exam for the Ice Age Generation” — What Those Planning to Try Next Year Should Do Now‘.
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