March 7, 2019

More and more workers in Japan are working in non-regular employment positions. The latest monthly results of the Internal Affairs Ministry’s labor force survey found that the percentage of non-regular employees to all employees excluding corporate executives in January 2019 increased to 38.3%, hitting a record high for two consecutive months.

The number of employees excluding executives went up by 4.5 million to 56.3 million in January 2019 from 51.8 million in January 2013. Of the additional 4.5 million jobs, 3.3 million or 72.8% are non-regular jobs.

Normally, non-regular workers are low-paid and work in unstable employment positions. It is the Prime Minister Abe Shinzo-led government which adversely revised the law on the use of dispatched workers and increased the number of non-regular workers. Prime Minister Abe boasts that his “Abenomics” economic policy has created more jobs, but in reality, most of them are unstable, non-regular jobs.