A front page story in the May 25 print edition of the Asahi Shimbun reported that the overwhelming recruitment rate for new graduates continued this spring, with 98.1 percent of people graduating from universities in 2024 securing work, the highest rate since the labor and education ministries started keeping such records in 1997. The newspaper notes that the numbers were not influenced by any “outside forces,” such as the COVID pandemic, and that employers are aggressively hiring new staff amidst a pronounced labor shortage. As a point of comparison, the lowest graduate employment rate was 91 percent in 2011, when the economy was still reeling from the 2008 world recession and which, if you think about it, doesn’t really sound that low. But this is Japan, where actual university studies and subsequent career paths aren’t necessarily coherent, but more on that in a bit. Except for a dip during COVID, the recruitment rate has steadily risen ever since. The rate for high school graduates was just as impressive: 98 percent, the same rate as last year. 

A labor ministry official told Asahi that they believe this sellers’ market will continue indefinitely, a perspective that the newspaper qualifies in a second related article on page 7 and which discusses the problem of “mismatch” for new employees at Japanese trading companies. Often new employees are assigned to divisions or sections that they are either not suited for or find unappealing. Traditionally, the trading company would decide on an assignment during the initial training period based on the employee’s character and other criteria, but since such initial assignments can have a profound effect on the employee’s career, sometimes the employee is not satisfied with the assignment, so the companies are endeavoring to get a better idea of its new recruits’ desires and strong points during the university interview sessions and then place them in jobs they prefer. 

For example, Sumitomo Corporation plans to introduce a placement system called Will Selection starting next spring where company recruiters and recruits determine what position the recruit will fill after starting work. The system will apply to 30 percent of new recruits, who will be able to choose from some 30 job descriptions. The remaining 70 percent will follow the “regular selection process,” wherein assignments are determined after the recruit starts working. A publicity rep for the company told Asahi that in recent years students have had a more definite idea of what kind of work they want to do, as well as more detailed career goals. Consequently, many who find that those desires are not met after they start working leave the company early on. Mitsui & Co., Ltd., has already started a similar program, with recruits offered the chance to choose the section where they will work, though they will need to go through a probationary period in the section “in order to understand the nature of the work more comprehensively.” Marubeni adopted such a system in 2021 called Career Vision Recruitment wherein section assignments are determined prior to entering the company. 

The exceptions are C. Itoh, which offered some recruits the choice of assignment as far back as 1998, but has since rescinded the policy; and Mitsubishi Corporation, which has always maintained the right to make such decisions since the company believes the new employee cannot really understand which section best suits them until they start working for the company and gain experience. If they later feel dissatisfied they can always negotiate for a change in assignment.

Though trading companies are not unique to Japan, the traditional Japanese system of recruitment and advancement are especially suited to trading company operations, which mostly have to do with facilitating business deals for a wide variety of industry and corporate needs. Japanese companies tend to hire new blood based more on the university one attends than on the subject one studied because, in the end, the company will want the employee to bend to the particular nature of the company, which means becoming accommodated to its culture and practices. Even students who majored in technical fields, such as engineering, will not necessarily be hired to use those technical skills. Consequently, allowing recruits to choose what field they will work in is revolutionary in a sense, and Asahi seemed to be limiting its article to trading companies in order to show how desperate the private sector is to hold on to new employees, because one of the more salient characteristics of a sellers’ labor market is higher turnover.

And that appears to be the case, according to a report, titled wryly, “You’re quitting already?”, that appeared on NHK April 17, less than one month into the new fiscal year, when graduates typically start their new jobs. The report notes a marked increase on social media of posts, highlighted by the hashtag #2024sotsu, meaning someone who graduated in 2024, that discuss leaving the company that hired them. NHK also looked into the trending term taishoku daiko, meaning “resignation proxy,” which refers to specialized agents who will call your company and tell them you are quitting on your behalf. Employees who want to leave their jobs but for some reason don’t want to do it themselves hire these companies to do it for them. NHK says that requests for this kind of service increase every year. 

They talked to one such agency in Tokyo that was launched 2 years ago. As of April 15, they’ve carried out 678 proxy resignations this year, 110 of which were for new graduates, meaning they had likely started work on or around April 1. The reasons given by these “clients” for quitting ranged from “It wasn’t the kind of work I expected” to restrictions on dress and appearance. However, some of the other reasons made it sound as if there was some serious misunderstandings between recruiter and recruit during the interview stage. Someone said they wanted to quit because they had joined believing they would be a regular employee of the company but it turned out they were more of a contract employee. Some others said that once they started they were the objects of harassment and verbal abuse. These sound like violations of labor practices and probably should have been met with legal action rather than resignation, but it’s difficult to tell because new graduates will often respond to the fresh reality of a workplace environment with shock and confusion. The sudden constraints and duties can lead to disillusionment and disappointment, and a few obviously realize that. One resignation proxy client placed all the blame on themself: “I have nothing bad to say about my superior, but I could not adjust to the atmosphere of the workplace due to my immaturity.” 

NHK talked on camera to another official of a resignation proxy company with the ingenious name of Mo Muri (I Just Can’t Anymore…) who defended his work and the young people who solicit their services by saying that the norm in Japan is thought to be lifetime employment, but many graduates now come to see, only weeks into their new jobs, that they aren’t going to be happy there and should leave as soon as possible so as to find a more suitable position. He said he often gets calls from former clients who are now working jobs that they like and who say they are glad they quit when they did. 

According to the labor ministry, in 2021, 32.3 percent of graduates quit their new jobs within three years, 24.5 percent within two years, and 12 percent within the year, thus demonstrating higher “job mobility” than in the past. And that may be a good thing, NHK suggests. A company that advises people on changing jobs told NHK that the main reason for people quitting has always been the same: insufficient pay. After that, the reasons, in order of declining frequency, are: don’t get along with colleagues, a poor environment for nurturing employees, a desire to do different work, and poor working hours. As one expert told NHK, most of these reasons point to the same problem, which is that employers don’t deal with employees in a direct, mutually beneficial manner, and the employee believes they have no choice but to quit, because they think working conditions and work assignments are inflexible. The expert also points out that Japan’s hallowed lifetime employment system has, for all intents and purposes, “collapsed,” even though it is still nominally held up as an ideal. As a result, new workers have come to see that toiling for the same employer forever is less important than maximizing one’s market value as a worker, and that requires broader experience, even if, on the surface, changing jobs for one’s own benefit is frowned upon. 

A professor of labor law points out that the labor shortage in Japan, which covers all industries, will likely continue, thus making it not only easy for workers to change jobs as they see fit, but compelling them to do so. What’s curious about his remarks is that he says it is “perfectly legal” to change jobs, thus implying that many graduates may actually think it is illegal to quit so soon after joining a company. The continued success of the resignation proxy business certainly indicates that new employees definitely think it is improper to quit, even though it is a basic human right to do so. In Japan, the institutionalization of the university recruitment process, not to mention the systemization of job orientation over time—which effectively but probably falsely gives workers the impression that the skills they’ve acquired on the job are peculiar to the corporate culture that cultivated them—has perverted the labor market, at least in comparison to other countries, where people freely change jobs in order to better themselves. That is the prime advantage to workers of a sellers’ market. 

The thing is, even in Japan it has always been common for graduates to leave their new jobs early on. There was even a clever name for it: gogatsu-byo, or “the May affliction,” which describes the wave of resignations of new recruits that occur after the Golden Week holiday, during which these new recruits had the time and leisure to consider their circumstances and find them wanting. The reason the media is covering a similar situation now with such fervor is that the quitting is happening before Golden Week, but it shouldn’t be a cause for panic. It may simply mean that Japan’s labor environment is becoming more normal or, at least, rational.