Japan Press Weekly

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2014 December 24 - 2015 January 6 [LABOR]

Number of non-regular workers reaches 20 million

The number of non-regular workers passed the 20 million mark in November for the first time, the Internal Affairs Ministry on December 26 announced.

On a year-on-year basis, the number of non-regular workers increased by 480,000 to the current 20.12 million while the number of regular workers decreased by 290,000. This shows that the growing tendency is for employers to replace regular employees with non-regular employees.

The ratio of non-regular workers to all employees who do not hold executive positions has reached 38%. Non-regular workers made up 57.2% of female workers and 50.5% of young workers aged 15 to 24. As shown by these figures, women and the youth find it most difficult to obtain stable jobs.

Inoue Hisashi, Secretary General of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren), pointed out that if labor regulations are relaxed as the Abe administration seeks, large corporations will use ever more non-regular employees to cut labor costs.