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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

#31

Post by rtpg »

Qub3d wrote: post #29
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.

Wait, i'm confused. I've always been told America poured tons of money into Germany via the Marshall Plan [0], which resulted in the "Wirtschaftswunder"[+] of the 50s and 60s. Former president Hoover went over and surveyed Germany almost directly after the war, in 1947. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195002/http://www.un.org... [+]: Literally "economic miracle"

Didn't Marshall Plan money end up coming back to the US?

Essentially a loan to purchase US goods?

It's definitely helpful as a loan, of course.

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

#32

Post by toomuchtodo »

mikekchar wrote: post #27
cgarrigue wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The image you have is probably close to how in some societies 2 families decide their children are betrothed to each other. The reality is closer to match making: some colleagues might introduce you to somebody who could be a match. Or maybe they will invite you to what is called a goukon, a group date where one of the male participants invite a few colleagues or friends of his who are single while his girlfriend inv…

Though to be fair, arranged marriages are pretty common in Japan. Several of my friends have arranged marriages and are as happy as any other couple I know. I suppose you can think of it like online dating, where there is also an expectation that both parties are looking to get married. It would not surprise me at all that a company would pay the fees for a match maker if being single was causing a valued employee em…

I can appreciate that having work intervene is weird, but that's the culture apparently.

Studies have shown having a partner increases wages and helps you live longer. And the Japanese live the longest. Strange coincidence.

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

#33

Post by raleighm »

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…

>> sourcing the bride

To be clear, this is not at all normal in Japan either (at least not in Tokyo or Osaka or anywhere other than very small companies with septuagenarian managers). No one prices matchmaking services into compensation considerations. Agree generally with the rest.

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

#35

Post by seanmcdirmid »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #5
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #3

> At the same time, baby boomers are approaching retirement It wouldn't have occurred to me that Japan had a baby boom. I suppose soldiers returning home in despair or in triumph are all looking for comfort and stability.

The last century of Japanese history looks a lot like that of the Western developed nations. (Probably because Japan made itself into a Western-style empire, then got involved in WW2 big time with the Western powers, then got a Western-style American occupation, so…)

Almost all countries baby boomed after WW2, not just westernized ones.

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

#36

Post by raleighm »

patio11 wrote: post #19
sho wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my boss assumed that it would be sourcing the bride Are you sure you understood him correctly? That would be highly irregular, to say the least. More likely it was an offer to pay for a matching agency. Arranged marriages between specific people are pretty rare these days, and unheard of outside of family. Unless your boss literally adopted you, he would never take on that responsibility!

I doubt he would phrase it the same way I did, but I am absolutely not materially misremembering the conversation in which he said, and this is a verbatim quote translated from Japanese, "[24 year old coworker], this is Patrick. He just joined, graduated from a good school in America, and has a bright future with the company. Have you ever considered an international marriage?"

That's very different!

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

#37

Post by fenomas »

sho wrote: post #15
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…

> my boss assumed that it would be sourcing the bride Are you sure you understood him correctly? That would be highly irregular, to say the least. More likely it was an offer to pay for a matching agency. Arranged marriages between specific people are pretty rare these days, and unheard of outside of family. Unless your boss literally adopted you, he would never take on that responsibility!

I think people are reading rather too much into the phrase "sourcing". Read it as "assumed he'd probably wind up marrying a coworker" and the boss in question is just observing the obvious - workplace marriages are quite common in Japan, especially considering that company employees around that age tend to socialize a lot within the company.

One can think of such things as non-pecuniary benefits of a job but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a boss who's ever considered it in those terms. More likely they're just acting on the "truth universally acknowledged" that young single employees must be in want of a spouse.

(Of course, the reverse of this is one of the ways Japanese companies are rough on women - if you're 23 and single people will tend to assume you're going to marry someone and quit in a few years, and treat you accordingly.)

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

#38

Post by dcw303 »

The problem is Japan has been in a deflationary environment for so long that they've forgotten how to bump up a price and turned into a nation of misers.

I've witnessed first hand the collective hysteria when an ice cream company raised their prices by 10 yen[0] and also had to put up with coworkers banging on in excitement whenever 7-11 has an Onigiri sale dropping from 110 to 100 yen. Not to mention the queues stretching around the block when Yoshinoya cuts a buck and a half off their beef bowls.

My anecdotal evidence, based on looking in shop windows, is there's plenty of part time (arubaito) jobs on offer; the problem is young people are too smart to take them up on their pitiful 700 yen per hour offers, which in Tokyo barely cover your transport and lunch costs. And yet the businesses will continue to weep and wail and gnash their teeth because they can't find anyone. It's not rocket science.

[0] https://qz.com/656080/a-japanese-ice-cream-maker-deeply-apol...

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

#39

Post by adventured »

Japan's primary problem on income is that the economic ground they've lost in the last 20 years is vast. In the late 1980s, their GDP per capita was beyond that of the US. Now it needs to climb 50% to catch up. The last 20 years has taken them back to #16 among major economies in terms of GDP per capita. That gives you an idea of how difficult it's going to be for Japan to bring their incomes back in line with high per capita output economies like the US (or Australia, Denmark, Sweden, etc).

They need very substantial, sustained economic growth for a decade or more to start regaining lost ground. Their debt problems will continue to put pressure on the Yen, the debasement of which is a big culprit in the sizable drop in their standard of living over the last decade. While their interest costs are eating up such a large portion of their budget, their ability to properly invest into growth is heavily restricted. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've yet to see a plan for how they're going to deal with that. To make matters worse, their savings rate has dropped to low single digits, as their standard of living has dropped they've been forced to reduce savings to try to maintain (which has further pressured the government's ability to properly fund itself, as they can no longer count on tapping into large new pools of savings via debt issuance, leading to abusing the Yen as a last resort).

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

#40

Post by delhanty »

dcw303 wrote: post #38

The problem is Japan has been in a deflationary environment for so long that they've forgotten how to bump up a price and turned into a nation of misers. I've witnessed first hand the collective hysteria when an ice cream company raised their prices by 10 yen[0] and also had to put up with coworkers banging on in excitement whenever 7-11 has an Onigiri sale dropping from 110 to 100 yen. Not to mention the queues stre…

>coworkers banging on in excitement whenever 7-11 has an Onigiri sale dropping from 110 to 100 yen

Usually it's an up to 150 yen onigiri for 100 yen, so of course they're going to get excited.

Edit: It looks like it is/was an up to 160 yen onigiri for 100 yen! That's a 37.5% discount! [1]

[1] http://seven-eleven-mania-blog.jp/gohankei/5617/

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