Japan Press Weekly

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2015 February 18 - 24 [LABOR]

Number of regular workers reduced by 160K, non-regular workers increased by 560K

Government data shows that the number of regular employees in Japan decreased by 160,000 last year while that of non-regular employees increased by 560,000, revealing a growing tendency toward the use of temporary workers.

The former stands at 32.78 million. The latter at 19.62 million accounts for 37.4% of all workers, hitting a record-high in terms of both the number and the percentage.

In the 2014 labor force survey by the Internal Affairs Ministry, the largest number of persons who are in non-regular position stated, “I couldn’t find a regular job,” as the reason for their status. This represents that about 3.31 million workers are working under casual or temporary labor contracts due to necessity.

Among non-regular workers, the percentage of those whose annual income is less than two million yen is 56.5% for men and 85.2% for women. A total of 15 million people are in the “working poor” spectrum.

Successive Liberal Democratic Party governments have tried to water down the Worker Dispatch Law to smooth the way for employers to replace regular workers with non-regular ones. Blaming the rules for the protection of workers as “bedrock regulations”, the Abe Cabinet intends to do more favors for the business community, including the creation of a zero-overtime-payment system and further relaxation of the Worker Dispatch Law. If these become legalized, the bottom rung of the ladder of low-paying precarious positions will no doubt swell.