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In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

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Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#141

Post by xelxebar »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

> A quick google suggests ~18%

FWIW, this figure looks to be the fraction of 20–69 year olds in the entire population who are unemployed[0]. Referencing the official definitions[1], the standard unemployment figure of 2.6 (as of 2026-02) narrows that denominator to people who are receiving wages or actively looking for work.

> which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training.

From the above, 18% seems like the wrong number to look at. Heck, why not quote 38.1%, since it captures everyone who can legally work (including 15 and 90 year olds)?

IMO, the base population we want to look at is people who actually want a job, which is captured by various Labor Underutilization (LU) metrics. These all hover around 2.5–6.0% according to public records[2], and are also defined in the official docs[1].

[0]:https://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/sokuhou/tsuki/pdf/gaiyou....

[1]:https://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/pdf/hndbk5_2.pdf

[2]:file:///var/folders/96/k0p95wxn7sg5_xjnv5n233bc0000gn/T/gaiyou-1.pdf

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#142

Post by makeitdouble »

epolanski wrote: post #7
maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

18% is one of the.lowest rates on the planet. 4th in fact. This includes early retirees, full time students, home makers and people unable to work for health related reasons.

Japan's employment rate is hard to compare, in that many of these job just wouldn't be seen as real jobs in any other country ("bullshit job"), and it's compound by half of the population being over 50. A high employment among the elderly could just be masking the harsher truth when that upper half passes away.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#143

Post by [deleted] »

chromacity wrote: post #76
areoform wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Grunting out 2.6 babies before you’re 35. * destroying your body, stripping your bones, getting diabetes and temporarily (or permanently) disabling yourself with issues no healthcare provider will take seriously for decades to come for 2.6 babies in your youth. ––– Someone called this a "belief." There's a 10% to 4% probability that the average teenage girl will die from childbirth, given the cumulative risk of pre…

Indeed. Gotta keep that body in a tip-top shape so that we can pull off all-nighters at some dude's AI startup while eating pizza and pretzels.

[deleted]

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#144

Post by j-bos »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

It seems to be human nature to chase after easy to understand solutions rather than addressing ifficult bottlenecks and friction. Doctors are a great example. In order to be a doctor, you have to study for 12 years. But four of those years involve studying generally unrelated topics like any other college degree despite medicine effectively being a trade. Then on top of that, you have the limited spaces for residents anyway, so more great med students still != more doctors. And then on top of that you have the issue that teaching hospitals are usually split apart from regular hospitals and A med student who ends up at a particular teaching hospital basically ends up locked in until their residency finishes leaving them vulnerable to even more pressure.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#145

Post by roysting »

cco wrote: post #41
chaostheory wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There is only so much you can pay the people doing the kind of work like cleaning the Shinkansens or manning the 7-11's because it affects customer costs. i.e. There's a point where you increase the salary of 7-11 workers that it causes a $2 fried chicken snack to inflate to $10 that customers will refuse to buy 2. Even if there was magically enough money and time to retrain people, they would still be short of wo…

Out of curiosity, what percentage of a fried chicken snack's final cost do you think is labor from that 7-11 worker?

It's not even just labor, it is the fully burdened labor (i.e., all costs of that labor, which is well beyond the wage/salary an employee sees...the true cost of labor, i.e., a $20/hr wage is actually a $25-28 expense), multiplied by the number of hours and number of people working during those hours that becomes a cumulative overhead cost that is added to the wholesale and other general overhead costs that the item margin must cover in addition to providing a certain profit.

Then there is also something like spoilage that comes into play in an example like your "fried chicken snack", which may not sell within FDA food regulation timeline and temperature, and therefore must be thrown away...a total loss.

But it's not just a total loss; not only did you then not make a profit on the sale of the "fried chicken snack", you also are in the hole to the tune of the wholesale cost of the chicken snack, e.g., $4, the labor and other indirect and overhead costs in addition to the opportunity cost, e.g., $1.

So a $1 earnings from a $6 "fried chicken snack" may turn into a $4 loss of the chicken at wholesale price and an additional loss of $1 for labor, overhead, etc. So now you are $5 in the hole when you had hoped to be $1 in the black, and now have to sell 6x$6 "fried chicken snacks" just to break even and finally make that $1 you had previously hoped for.

That's just a very simplified version of just something as simple as "fried chicken snacks". It gets way more complicated from there.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#146

Post by andsoitis »

Lerc wrote: post #84
ryandrake wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money, money, money, and money. We need it to survive. Until people's basic needs are taken care of for them, they need to do what they can to live.

Humans are older than money, so evidently we don't need it to survive, but there is more to existence than mere survival. I agree that people's basic needs to be taken care of, but I think that is an issue that needs to happen because of automation. It needs to happen because it is simply the right thing to do. I would go as fas as saying It shouldn't just be basic needs. Society should be aiming to provide the entir…

> Society should be aiming to provide the entire hierarchy of needs for everyone.

I don’t know. Society should provide the framework within which people can achieve their needs (and wants), but not the needs and wants themselves directly.

Otherwise you put an artificial cap on human growth and inefficient allocation of resources.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#147

Post by deepsun »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #99
deepsun wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is very different than most cultures in cleaning after yourself. It's very ingrained in their psyche, e.g. school students are trained to clean their classrooms in organized way. So your argument might hold for other countries, but not for Japan. Cleaning is a pretty honorable thing to do there (and it's super-clean as people trash way less).

More of a “it’s an honourable job, and I respect people who do it, but personally I wouldn’t do it” kinda thing. Status is ingrained in the culture. What you do, which neighbourhood you live in Tokyo, what school you went to and etc. matters a lot to a random person.

Good to know, thank. But the status thing is very much the same, if not even more important on in US. The whole red-vs-blue counties thing, is very much urban rich-vs-poor countryside.

Maybe not so much in Europe, although I'm not sure. Japan has a different sense of shame, that's for sure. But status (neighborhood/job) sounds the same.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#148

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #54
ryandrake wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money, money, money, and money. We need it to survive. Until people's basic needs are taken care of for them, they need to do what they can to live.

Why not simply pay the homemakers? Why is it so important that everyone produce economic output at the widget factory? Allow me to translate into a language you can understand: The people who are all “unemployed” are actually performing valuable services like maintaining the future labor pool, learning how to become skilled workers, and so on. These people should not have a second job, they should be paid for the val…

IMO, basic income for parents is absolutely a policy that Japan should enact.

And the question of how much the payment should be has a straightforward answer: adjust until the birth rate reaches replacement.

If the payment ends up high enough that some mothers or fathers opt to leave the labor force to focus on raising their kids, then so be it; that's probably healthier for society in the long term.

It would be expensive, yes, but cheaper than the alternatives. And anyway, Japan's stagnant economy would likely benefit from the boost to consumer demand.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#149

Post by renewiltord »

j-bos wrote: post #144
maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

It seems to be human nature to chase after easy to understand solutions rather than addressing ifficult bottlenecks and friction. Doctors are a great example. In order to be a doctor, you have to study for 12 years. But four of those years involve studying generally unrelated topics like any other college degree despite medicine effectively being a trade. Then on top of that, you have the limited spaces for residents…

That’s a North American quirk.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#150

Post by PearlRiver »

AngryData wrote: post #130
youre-wrong3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even tho you added an edit. You’re still wrong. Garbage collection is typically a high paying job because no one wants to do it. But people still consider it “below” them and don’t want to do it even when there’s a high unemployment rate.

I don't know if I would call it high pay anywhere ive lived. It is okay pay around me right now in a less prosperous area of the country for not requiring tools or previous skills. But the main thing going for it around here is stability of hours, a decent amount of holidays off, and you don't have to destroy your body.

It is actually a pretty good job. Civilization will always need garbage disposal.

So many people are locked in on on temporary contracts constantly in fear of termination.

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