The Nikkei daily newspaper is running a series on its front page called “the crisis of youth unemployment” and today deals with those Japanese who are now in their 30s, and graduated from university in the 1990s during the so-called “ice age” for recruitment.
Apparently there is a boom in job changing at the moment in Japan, but, unsurprisingly, it’s those who were already in a blue chip job who are finding it easier than they expected to leave the warm embrace of their lifetime employer and receive plenty of job offers elsewhere. The companies who are looking for people in their 30s are of course the very ones who cut back too drastically on graduate recruitment in the 1990s.
Sales experience and IT skills are in demand, which means that many of the ice age generation are still left out in the cold, as they have spend the past decade or so in “freeter” jobs in admin, retail or restaurants. Apparently the Japanese government is overhauling vocational training as a way of rescuing them.
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