TMCnet News
850,000 join Japan's workforce on economic recovery+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, April 3_(Kyodo) _ An estimated 850,000 new graduates from colleges and high schools joined Japan's workforce Monday, up several hundred thousand from last year as many companies hired more young people on the back of economic recovery and ahead of the upcoming mass retirement of post-World War II baby boomers. The ratio of college students who had landed jobs as of Feb. 1 rose by 3.2 percentage points from a year earlier to 85.8 percent, and the rate for high school graduates at the end of January climbed by 3.7 points to 85.3 percent, according to surveys by the labor ministry and other entities. A poll by the Japan Business Federation underscored the trend, with about 54 percent of major corporations, including securities firms, banks and manufacturers, saying they were hiring more new graduates than the previous year. Roughly three-quarters of the polled companies said they struggled to find new workers, the Nippon Keidanren poll indicated. Many labor studies have also indicate young employees face a more competitive employment environment, as an increasing number of corporations have introduced performance-based pay scales, instead of the traditional seniority-based system. Monday was the first weekday of Japan's fiscal 2006. |