IN-EAST News
08.07.2008 - 00:00
Dramatic Rise in Non-standard Employment in Japan
Analysis of Karen Shire and Jun Imai
The results of the latest Employment Status Survey of Japan conducted in 2007 published on July 3, 2008 by the Japanese Statistics Bureau demonstrates the key role of non-standard employment growth in the transformation of the Japanese "long-term" employment system. This survey, conducted every five years, was a key data source in a project conducted by Jun Imai (Research Associate at the IN-EAST, UDE) and Karen Shire (Professor of Comparative Sociology and Japanese Society at the UDE) on the rise of temporary work in Japan, funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG). The results confirm their argument about the replacement of regular with temporary workers in Japan, and the complex gendering of employment forms.
According to the survey, 67 % of 54.7 million employees are 'regular' employees with "open" (non-limited term) contracts, while non-regular employees reached 33 % of the workforce. This is a 10 % rise in the share of the non-regular workforce since 1997. The gender difference is striking. More than half of the female workforce is employed in non-regular contracts (53.1 %). But non-regular work also grew to 18 % of the male workforce (compared to 8.8 % in 1997).
All sub-categories of "non-regular" employment contracts have expanded over the past five years. While "part-times" (paato/arubaito) is still the largest category with 22.6 % of total employees, "temporary agency work" (haken) and "limited-term contracting work" (keiyaku/shokutaku) expanded more than part-timers. Especially remarkable is the expansion of "temporary agency work" from only 0.5 % in 1997 to 2.8 % in 2007. This places Japan among those nations with the highest shares of temporary agency employment. These data confirm the arguments of Jun Imai and Karen Shire about the impact of temporary work deregulation on the expansion of the market for temporary employment in Japan and the shift of employment risks away from firms to workers.
Since its establishment in 1986, "temporary agency work" was a female dominated employment form, with large number of female clericals employed as temps. The new survey results show a dramatic change in the gendered composition of temporary agency work. The percentage of women in agency jobs dropped to 62.1 % in 2007 from 79.4 % in 1997, while "manufacturing and construction" became the largest occupational category of temps (39.6 %) surpassing clerical work (36.6 %) for the first time in the two decade history of temporary agency employment in Japan.
For an analysis of the deregulation of temporary work up through the 2002 Employment Status Survey, see:
Imai, Jun (forthcoming in 2008): The Transformation of Japanese Employment Relations: Reform Without Labor. Houndmills: palgrave Macmillan press.
Imai, Jun: The Impact of the Temporary Help Business on Labour Mobility in Japan (under submission for peer review at Japanese Studies, Routledge).
Imai, Jun and Shire, Karen 2006: Employment Deregulation and the Expanding Market for Temporary Labour in Japan. In: Haak, René (Ed.): The Changing Structure of Labor in Japan – Japanese Human Resource Management between Continuity and Innovation. London: Palgrave Press, pp. 113–129.
Imai, Jun 2004: The Rise of Temporary Employment in Japan: Legalisation and Expansion of a Non-Regular Employment Form. Duisburger Arbeitspapiere Ostasienwissenschaften, no. 62/2004.
Shire, Karen A. 2002: Stability and Change in Japanese Employment Institutions: The Case of Temporary Work. In: ASIEN, Nr. 84, Juli, S. 21–30.
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