Jobs for High School Graduates by Cutting Overtime

With the annual average unemployment rate marking a record high of five percent in 2001, unemployment among young people — astonishingly high at around 10 percent — is a serious concern from a long-term perspective. The rate of success in finding jobs (as of the end of November 2001) for high school students due to graduate in the spring of 2002 was a record low of 63.4 percent. In order to reverse such unemployment trends among young people, local governments have embarked on a new scheme to hire new high school graduates for a limited period by cutting back on the overtime worked by their staff members.

High school student job-hunting activities are normally coordinated by Public Employment Security Offices and high schools. Firms wishing to employ new graduates are required to submit job-offer documents to the office, and these are passed on to high schools. Students, on the other hand, with advice from their teachers select an offer from among those sent to the school, apply, then sit for the examination the firm conducts in September. Until recently, almost all students wishing to work after graduation were promised jobs, but the situation has changed in recent years: the number of job offers intended for high school graduates has been falling sharply; the ratio of the number of job openings to the number of young applicants stood at 0.98 as of the end of November 2001, resulting in the lowest rate of promised employment, 63.4 percent, since the commencement of the survey in 1987.

The deterioration of the job market for those who leave high school is attributable to the reduction in hiring of new graduates due to the current recession, and to a shift in the interest of firms towards university graduates and others with higher education. The rate of success in job hunting among university graduates (as of December 1, 2001) improved to 76.7 percent, 1.5 percentage points over the same period the previous year, realized at the expense of the job market for high school graduates.

The employment situation affecting high school graduates is much more severe in local areas where job offers are becoming scarce and the opportunities for part-time jobs are limited. It is regional governments in such areas that have taken action in hiring unemployed young people by cutting their own labor costs.

In Hyogo Prefecture, which was the center of the 1994 Kobe Earthquake, the prefectural government has been tackling the employment situation within the prefecture since the earthquake, and since 2000 has been conducting a program whereby the overtime of some 8,000 or so staff members is cut by five percent per year, and the ¥200 million saved is invested in hiring jobless young people. Other local governments see the program as a model.

Hokkaido, where the promised employment rate for high school graduates marked the second lowest figure (29.3%) after Okinawa Prefecture, is to adopt a similar program in fiscal 2002; it will cut the overtime of its civil servants by five percent, and employ some 150 young people under 20 years old as one-year temporary employees. The contract period is limited since the program is designed partly to offer a type of internship before actual job engagement.

Akita Prefecture is also planning to hire some 80 people under 29 years old for one year. Of the 80 vacancies, 44 posts will be offered exclusively to new high school graduates, who will engage in clerical work for four days a week, 30 hours in all, at prefectural offices while learning basic business skills and practices, including computer skills, by helping regular staff members.

With work-sharing drawing attention in the business world, this series of programs launched by local governments is attracting notice as a "public" version of work-sharing, in which public institutions, too, try to cope with employment issues affecting young people, particularly high school graduates.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department