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Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

bloomberg.com

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Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#151

Post by ravenstine »

offtop5 wrote: post #130

>Under Katsube’s direction, Junko also enrolled in a program that helps shut-ins learn social skills by engaging in activities such as gardening, music, sports, and volunteering. America desperately needs this. I fear the rise of social media has caused more and more people to stay inside all day without interacting with any real humans. I've found Meetup to work very well for getting out of the house. I did find it…

> I've found Meetup to work very well for getting out of the house.

Except a lot of the meetups where I live either haven't come back or they are "virtual". :(

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#152

Post by burntoutfire »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #140
saagarjha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the scenario you've mentioned does not describe these households. The problem here is that there are adults who are partially or wholly supported by their parents in a house where they are not living with (nor was it designed for them to live with) a spouse or children.

Again. We're failing to address the "so what?" What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?

When the parents die, the dependant, now in their middle age, will be left with no income and no life skills.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#153

Post by function_seven »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #140
saagarjha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the scenario you've mentioned does not describe these households. The problem here is that there are adults who are partially or wholly supported by their parents in a house where they are not living with (nor was it designed for them to live with) a spouse or children.

Again. We're failing to address the "so what?" What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?

I suppose if you polled people in this situation, and just asked them, "Is this the life you want to live?", that would answer the your question.

I don't know what the results would be, but I can guess that a large percentage of unemployed 30- and 40-somethings living with their parents would very much rather not be. Is it 10%, 35%, 65%? I'm guessing over 50% to be sure.

You can argue that the society is set up wrong. But there it is, with this large cohort of people isolated and shut in. In an economy that still relies on a younger population to take care of its elders.

Robots might one day deal with all productive work, but we're nowhere near that yet.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#154

Post by tasogare »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #140
saagarjha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the scenario you've mentioned does not describe these households. The problem here is that there are adults who are partially or wholly supported by their parents in a house where they are not living with (nor was it designed for them to live with) a spouse or children.

Again. We're failing to address the "so what?" What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?

I agreed with you about the fact living at parents’ home is not that much of an issue if we compare it to previous history, however staying there without spouse is indeed a very different matter than having a three generations family (even 4 for some people I know) under the same roof. New enough babies is a big issue here. Actually, I know two people in this situation and I feel a bit bad for them: it’s hard to find a job and hard to find a partner and even when they have one living together and supporting children would be difficult money wise.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#156

Post by sirspacey »

The article clearly identifies the source of this challenge:

HR culture

I’ve worked in HR in the US. To say it is unbearably broken doesn’t begin to cover it.

Japan’s rigid hiring rituals are specific but I’ve encountered quite a bit of rigidity in HR culture in the US as well.

As we see nearly daily here on HN, the “filter process” HR uses is highly resistant to change and based on traditions that are objectively useless and horribly biased.

Somehow we seem to miss that economists are not the best experts to consult with here. Put another way - fix HR and suddenly economists wouldn’t need to “explain” so much when it comes to labor market dislocations.

So why haven’t we fixed these issues?

I know hundreds of people in HR trying to address these challenges. They invariably run into the fact that executives and hiring managers are the source of the misconceptions driving these systemic problems. That’s not a category of people who get overridden in companies.

I encountered this even in my own startups. Board members and company leaders believed they had near clairvoyance on how to hire - despite rarely being correct in practice.

tl;dr; The people (execs, hiring managers) who set the expectations around hiring have an unreasonable and inflexible dedication to their assumptions about how hiring should be done, leading those given the job of managing the hiring process (HR) to design woefully inefficient and biased hiring processes, leading to endemic dislocation in the job market that destroys the lives of people who didn’t pass the first check-point in their careers.

Checkout “DIY University” for more history on this issue. This is a problem that can, and has, destroyed nations.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#157

Post by yourapostasy »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #127

I feel like the "Jobless and living with parents" pejorative is missing the mark. Jobless -- So what? If a country has figured out how to provide for its people w/o jobs, so what? For example if we had perfect AI-robot slaves we'd all be jobless. Would it be a problem? Maybe we should ask people why they want a job, maybe what they want to do doesnt require one? "Living with their parents" - Again, so what? Much of t…

> "Living with their parents" - Again, so what?

Interesting advocacy both for [1] and against [2] nuclear families. Many more such studies and articles on both sides. As long as the median demographic for family formation continues to bleed usable income with each passing decade, the advocacy for either way won't matter if there simply is insufficient economic incentive to have children and raise them, and we'll see continued patterns like extended family or high-trust non-familial clans grouping together for sheer survival. We can handwave the trends away by hiding in median compensation figures, but societies with big and durable bifurcations aren't fun to live in for most people on the wrong end of that bifurcation.

[1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-real-roots-of-the-nuclear-fam...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuc...

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#158

Post by tasogare »

gfxgirl wrote: post #80
rib3ye wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like others having lived there for a short period of time, I agree with this observation. The cultural premium on risk, that may merely inconvenience someone, is unreasonably high (by my standard, anyway). Ever have to pay a bribe to a landlord to rent an apartment as a matter of accepted business protocol? Look up "reikin". Then you'll realize why some think it's totally reasonable to live out of an internet cafe.

It's not a bribe. That's your negative spin. The positive spin is it's just 2/26th pre-payment of the rent for 2 years. You then pay 1/26th every month for 2 years, repeat when you renew your contract. Do I like having to pay 2/26th up front (2 months rent?) no. But I also would prefer not to have to put down payments on cars/houses.

You are wrong. Those fees are added to the normal rent, they are not part of it. I choose my current appartment in part because there was no additional "gift money" to pay. Each time one moves place those have to be paid, which makes moving quite costly.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#159

Post by alxlaz »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #140
saagarjha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the scenario you've mentioned does not describe these households. The problem here is that there are adults who are partially or wholly supported by their parents in a house where they are not living with (nor was it designed for them to live with) a spouse or children.

Again. We're failing to address the "so what?" What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?

> What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?

Among others:

- Crippling depression for many of those who are jobless and living with their parents in a culture that is not exactly friendly to them.

- An increased incidence of health issues that are correlated with depression and loneliness.

- Decreased quality of life for elderly parents who need to support their children within the confines of a difficult, stressful job market and a pension system that sees increasing pressure from an aging population.

- An aging working population that has difficulties filling positions around a particular range of experience, which -- in turn -- can make it harder to sustain the social programs required to help people cope.

- Increased pressure on social spending in the long term, since people who are struggling to find jobs in their fourties are unlikely to be in a super well-paid position by the time they're sixty.

It's not like these people are basking in a Russell-esque life of idyllic idleness, like they're taking a perpetual sabbatical year. Many of them don't want to be in the position they're in.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#160

Post by gfxgirl »

brazzy wrote: post #99
gfxgirl wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a bribe. That's your negative spin. The positive spin is it's just 2/26th pre-payment of the rent for 2 years. You then pay 1/26th every month for 2 years, repeat when you renew your contract. Do I like having to pay 2/26th up front (2 months rent?) no. But I also would prefer not to have to put down payments on cars/houses.

If it truly were a pre-payment, it would be partially refunded when the rental contract terminates early.

No, it wouldn't. It would just be your non-refundable downpayment. Plenty of other things have non-refundable up front payments in the USA and other countries.
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