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Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

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Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#111

Post by nihonde »

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #96
patio11 wrote: post #2

Partly this is a recognition that Japan Inc. has historically awarded a blended compensation package which includes salary, benefits similar to most first-world countries, and a host of non-pecuniary terms which are not broadly enjoyed across all W-2 employees in the US. ("Expectation of lifetime employment" is a biggie; there are substantially more subtle terms, too, like "We're going to take care of you , and we si…

>[+] One of my first conversations with a boss at a traditionally managed Japanese company involved my expected timeline to get married and what the company's role in that process would be; my boss assumed that it would be sourcing the bride. This was the example I was thinking of when reading the first part of your message. I'm glad you said it because I feared it would've been seen as an exaggeration if I added it…

Not to trivialize real gender prejudice, but there is no shortage of Japanese women who are in a dire search for a convenient marriage to a busy man who can give her children, financial support, and otherwise leave her alone. Even among my friends, whom I consider to be highly intelligent and evolved people, this is a perfectly normal aspiration.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#112

Post by maxxxxx »

yequalsx wrote: post #107
maxxxxx wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German. I have never heard about these starved millions. The agrarian society plan was the Morgenthau plan which didn't get implemented from what I know. My parents are WW2 generation. I have never heard any complaints from them or relatives about the American behavior after WW2.

Being German does not preclude you from being ignorant of post war German history. Google it. You can find lots of information on the Allied occupation of Germany. It wasn't until the Berlin airlift that feeding Germans became fashionable. My dad was in WW2 on the American side. He ended as a guard in a POW camp after the war. He'd have denied the starvation too but it did occur. Eisenhower did want, initially, for G…

The first years after the war were confusing for everybody. The country had been effectively destroyed,news about German crimes slowly came out, nobody knew how the Germans would respond to occupation. It's no wonder it took years to sort things out.

No matter what people in DC were planning I have never heard from people who lived then about Americans getting in the way of people trying to rebuild.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#113

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

maxxxxx wrote: post #74
yequalsx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America did try to punish the Germans. Millions starved as a result of deliberate Allied policy. It wasn't until the schism with the USSR that policies shifted. Eisenhower in particular wanted Germany to be an agrarian society.

As a German. I have never heard about these starved millions. The agrarian society plan was the Morgenthau plan which didn't get implemented from what I know. My parents are WW2 generation. I have never heard any complaints from them or relatives about the American behavior after WW2.

The extreme version of the Morgenthau plan wasn't implemented, but they did do something close for 2 years.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#114

Post by wolfgke »

dmoy wrote: post #106
literallycancer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has severe wage compression going on for more than a decade. Companies are making more money every year, but instead of sharing that by increasing wages or sharing equity, they invest the profits (mostly abroad). The only reason it hasn't blown up yet is that the value of € is kept low by southern European countries that are struggling to stay afloat. Since the living costs remain relatively low, employees do…

60k Euro for a senior? Is that total liquid comp? That's like one fifth of what a senior makes at goofacesoftwhatever. I had no idea German salaries were so low, wow.

When I look at descriptions about the living costs/housing prices in SF and its environment, I think that with, say, EUR 40k one has a better life in Germany (except the really expensive metropolitan areas in Germany as Munich, Stuttgart etc.) than with US$ 100k somewhere around SF.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#115

Post by yequalsx »

maxxxxx wrote: post #112
yequalsx wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being German does not preclude you from being ignorant of post war German history. Google it. You can find lots of information on the Allied occupation of Germany. It wasn't until the Berlin airlift that feeding Germans became fashionable. My dad was in WW2 on the American side. He ended as a guard in a POW camp after the war. He'd have denied the starvation too but it did occur. Eisenhower did want, initially, for G…

The first years after the war were confusing for everybody. The country had been effectively destroyed,news about German crimes slowly came out, nobody knew how the Germans would respond to occupation. It's no wonder it took years to sort things out. No matter what people in DC were planning I have never heard from people who lived then about Americans getting in the way of people trying to rebuild.

Because the Americans that people in Germany interacted with weren't making the decisions. Use Google. Research it. It's not a controversial topic in terms of historicity. Germans as a matter of deliberate policy were prevented from getting the food they needed.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#116

Post by 0xbear »

wolfgke wrote: post #58
0xbear wrote: post #54

Yeah, I do get contacted by Japanese recruiters, and their comp in my field is pretty laughable by US standards. That said, the same applies to all of Europe as well. People literally seem to be making one third of what they'd be making in the US if they were any good.

The metric that you have to consider is salary - taxes - costs of living [including health insurance] + expected future revenues [in particular pensions] Can you provide me evidence that, say, Germany, is so much worse than the USA with respect to this metric?

Taxes are much lower in the US too, even if you factor in the cost of health insurance. And if you are expecting "pensions", there's a bridge I'd like to sell.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#117

Post by maxxxxx »

yequalsx wrote: post #115
maxxxxx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first years after the war were confusing for everybody. The country had been effectively destroyed,news about German crimes slowly came out, nobody knew how the Germans would respond to occupation. It's no wonder it took years to sort things out. No matter what people in DC were planning I have never heard from people who lived then about Americans getting in the way of people trying to rebuild.

Because the Americans that people in Germany interacted with weren't making the decisions. Use Google. Research it. It's not a controversial topic in terms of historicity. Germans as a matter of deliberate policy were prevented from getting the food they needed.

I guess I'll have to take your word. From what I have heard life in the American Zone was by far the best and it was worst in the Russian Zone.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#118

Post by closeparen »

FussyZeus wrote: post #70
ekianjo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem is young people are too smart to take them up on their pitiful 700 yen per hour offers, There's a large population of chinese students in Japan who are very happy to work at such rates.

> There's a large population of chinese students in Japan who are very happy to work at such rates. > which in Tokyo barely cover your transport and lunch costs Is this another of those things where paying a person an non-livable wage is going to be construed as a Good Thing™? How about we raise the prices so the people serving us the food can, you know, live?

Raising prices destroys demand. It's not immediately clear that 5 well employed people and 5 unemployed people are preferably to 10 poorly employed people.

If the 5 who would be unemployed have some superior alternative, why aren't they doing it already? Or would you say they should be forcibly unemployed to combat their laziness in looking for better work (which you apparently think exists)?

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#119

Post by emodendroket »

awkwarddaturtle wrote: post #95
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Allied Powers had seemingly learned the lessons of Versailles and didn't try to punish the losers (well, not as much), instead letting them grow. Thus why them not being victorious didn't matter, I guess.

> The Allied Powers had seemingly learned the lessons of Versailles and didn't try to punish the losers (well, not as much), instead letting them grow. This was true for Germany but not for japan. Due to hard feelings over ww2 and of course racial animosity/hatred, our plan for japan was deindustrialization. We wanted japan to be at least a few decades behind the US and turn more of their nation into docile agrarian…

There was a Japan faction and a China faction who each wanted their respective countries to be the center of US Asia policy and the China faction lost.

Re: Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers

#120

Post by watwut »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #98
watwut wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese marriage rates are in long term decline. They don't marry all that much.

Neither do American millennials. First world problems.

Americans still create couples that live together - just without papers. Japan is much different in that regard. They are singles.
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