“No One Left Behind”? Youth Employment in Japan

Eric Fong, University of Toronto
Junya Tsutsui, Ritsumeikan University

The youth employment rate in Japan had been low throughout the 1970s and 1980s. However, the situation has deteriorated rapidly. The employment rate between the ages of 15 and 24 reached 39% in 2010. There are many studies about youth employment in Japan. Surprisingly few studies have used longitudinal data to provide a more comprehensive picture of employment outcomes for young male and female. To fill this major gap in the research, we employed the Japanese Life Course Panel Survey to explore the pattern of youth employment in Japan. The results capture a peculiar feature of Japanese youth labor market. It suggests that the highly rigid nature of Japanese youth labor market. Findings show that the impact of years after graduation is much greater than that of gender and educational qualifications.