According to a survey by the Sanno Institute of Management, 76.3% of new recruits in Japan -- the highest figure since 1994 -- are eager to stay at their companies until their retirement age. The life

IMO this is crazy in a 21st century, global economy, and shows how truly uneducated about the real world and unrealistic these students are. Have they not seen what has happened to the Japanese electronics industry in just the past decade? To be maximally competitive, Japan needs to have a fluid workforce -- one capable of shifting to new industries/companies as they become more important. Also, do these kids really believe a decison they made at 22 years old based on a handful of interviews should determine the rest of their careers?

Having lived around the corner from the Sanno Institute of Management and having seen the calibre of their students, I wouldn't take too much stock from their survey.

Anyone who has worked in a Japanese company knows that the lifetime employment system is a cancer that Japan must get rid off. We've all seen the oji-sans in their 50s, doing nothing but taking part in endless meetings all day. The day they turn 60 they are forced to retire after being useless for years.

They may be eager to stay until retirement, but it is increasingly unlikely their employers will be eager to hang on to them for that long.

If you like the job and the company, why not?

Good Lord it scares me to think that I could still be living in the same town and working for the same employer I started with so many, many years ago. I look back and can see all the things that I would have missed out on if I spent my whole life working for one employer. It might have been a good thing 50 or 60 years ago but the world has changed so much. Since leaving my hometown and first job I have travelled the world, worked in 28 different countries, lived long term in 5 countries in diverse parts of the world, seen and done things (some I keep quiet about) that I never would have if I was a one job/company person. At times I may have missed out on financial stability and company benefits and I've never been anywhere long enough to get a Bangkok rolex copy let alone a gold watch but I have lived.

I would very much love to be an ojisan promised a generous pension and paid to do nothing. Sure its unsustainable. Sure its a bloody waste. But it would keep me happy and my family paid. Why would I be eager to throw myself into the american corporate world?

Most Japanese are not interested in career mobility, they are interested in belonging to a group and the security that provides them. The craddle to grave system is inflexible and has little if any connection to the fast moving global economy, but thats what most Japanese crave, whether it be in cramped living quarters or in trains. They dont need to speak English or interact with outsiders. The life time employment system provides them with a kind of blanket security and that becomes their comfort zone. All but impossible to fire or downsize worthless indviduals, it discourages any free thinking or innovation because these traits that are seen as risk to maintaining the group conformity. Unproductivity follows but it does provide for a family senior subordinate atmosphere that Japanese also desire. I have also worked in such places and honestly found them to be sickening. If Abe is to reform Japan and its employment system, this behavior would be a good place to start but good luck on any progress with that. It has been happening in some companies, but like most things in Japan, it will revert back to the old ways

This is not at all surprising. The Japanese educational system trains children to conform, and never be the "nail that sticks out". Japanese universities produce "graduates" who have spent more time traveling or playing tennis than studying in classrooms. This makes most young Japanese incapable of serious independent thought or action. They are never taught critical thinking, and leave university with little in the way of marketable skills or solid education. This being the case, they are much more dependent on their future employers to provide these things.

"They may be eager to stay until retirement, but it is increasingly unlikely their employers will be eager to hang on to them for that long."

Right, they might be eager for lifetime employment but many companies have other ideas for their future.

This is an absurd question. The Sanno Institute seems to be implying that recruits had something to do with the Lifetime Employment System falling out of favor in recent years. Horse puckey. The issue of "favoring" lifetime employment or not has very little to do with the employee and almost everything to do with the employer, with mass layoffs . . . err, "Downsizing" . . . err, I mean "Restructuring" becoming all the rage among companies seeking to streamline operations and produce a better bottom line for shareholders, all at the expense of the rank-and-file workers as well as future company innovation and performance.

Recruits being eager to stay at their companies until retirement reflects a acute awareness among today's graduates that their jobs -- and indeed financial futures -- hang onthe barest wisp of a thread, and that wish as they might, that thread could be cut at any moment by corporate management which has bought hook, line, and sinker into the American business model of, "Screw tomorrow. How much money can we cram into sharholders' (and management's) pockets today."

After a nearly two decades of "re-sutora" gutting companies of talent older than the magical cut-off age of 40, and a flurry of hiring desperate, young college graduates who would sign with a smile and heartfelt thanks a temp contract with the barest minimum of legally obligated benefits, Japanese companies look anything but safe to the average recruit. Japan, Inc. looks more like Japan, Sink, if you don't play your cards right.

It's no damned wonder recruits want job security.

Here's what I think: the JT posters are forgetting that the West also had lifetime employment systems until not too long ago. My dad, yep, my neighborhood's friends' dads, yep. Beaver Cleaver's dad, yep.

We need to ask the question why it was dismantled, and in whose interest it was done. It certainly wasn't done in the interest of the workers, because that was when single income households were de rigeur among the middle-class. (Like Japan in the 80s)

Anyway, the answers are quite unsettling, so I'll probably get lots of negatives for this comment.

Some one needs to tell these kids that "life time employment " no longer exists for new recruits for all intensive purposes

And even in the past it only applied to a few larger companies for the most part, but alas no more

intensive purposes

Intents and purposes.

I mean "Restructuring" becoming all the rage among companies seeking to streamline operations and produce a better bottom line for shareholders, all at the expense of the rank-and-file workers as well as future company innovation and performance.

What about customers? Streamlining also reduces costs to the end consumer, doesn't it? And many shareholders are also customers. If you are paying into a company pension or life insurance plan, then you too are a shareholder, aren't you?

Restructuring didn't become "all the rage among companies" because they were looking to rip off their rank-and-file workers, it became all the rage when companies began to face increased competition from foreign manufacturers. Companies had to streamline or die, and quite a few did in fact die. As for performance and innovation, the opposite is in fact true, innovation has increased in-step with streamlining, companies which cannot innovate or perform cannot compete. Shareholders are important because the money they invest in a company is used to pay for things like expansion, innovation, and finding ways to improve performance. If they don't receive a return for their investment, they won't invest, and workers will suffer, right? There are no easy choices, but choices must be made.

Japan was the main cause of company restructuring in America back in the 1980's and early 90's, and it has continued as other emerging economies like Korea, China, etc have begun competing in the international marketplace. A company can either restructure, relocate, or close. Restructuring was the top choice, and the least painful for ordinary workers.

Japan has been very slow to streamline and innovate it's domestic companies, which is why most of them have suffered heavy operating losses for several years running.

Sangetsu,

Everything you say would carry more weight if the management vs. employee salary gap wasn't widening annually. In the zero-sum game of unregulated capitalism as it is currently practiced in the US and around the world, employees are losing left and right to the point that there won't be a broad enough base of consumers with disposable income to support even the most innovative of companies, an issue that has plagued Japanese manufactures for more than a decade as domestic spending remains incredibly restrained.

In 1980, the average CEO compensation was 42 times that of the average employee. Now, it ranges anywhere from 204 to 495 times that of the average non-management worker. When comparing year-on-year corporate profits across three decades, the amount of money currently being thrown at CEOs in order to, ahem, "retain the best talent," hasn't produced even close to an equivalent return on the investment, a phenomenon easily see in the financial sector. Yet boards continue to insist their ridiculous-to-the-point-of-parody overpaid CEOs are indispensable, despite managing companies deep into the red. As the expression so eloquently goes, WTF? This effect being most pronounced in the financial sector, it continues in the consumer discretionary, consumer staples, and industrial sectors. None of these industries saw a CEO wage multiplier smaller than 200 times. Yet, three out of four of these industries performed at average or poor levels over the past decade, while management compensation went, of all directions, up.

As management theorist Peter Drucker consistently maintained, these out-of-whack compensation schemes are bad for business, a truth that has borne out across the width and breadth of the U.S. economy. In his estimation, the lopsided pay ratios hobble teamwork and promote a winner-takes-all, “I-did-it-because-I-could” climate that’s corrosive to the long-term health of a company, a point I made earlier. U.S. business acumen i6s trapped firmly in a “How much money can I make right at this moment and get out fast?” dynamic that is gutting the U.S. middle class. What makes it even more destructive is when companies are in the midst of huge layoffs, salary freezes, and the boss gets a raise. Why would any employee still holding on to a job in that company feel any compulsion whatsoever to work hard for a boss like that?

"What about customers? Streamlining also reduces costs to the end consumer, doesn't it?"

The customers have less money to spend because they're workers as well, receiving less real income thanks to free-market policies. The result: the entire economy is dragged down.

@ANewAsia

I would very much love to be an ojisan promised a generous pension and paid to do nothing. Sure its unsustainable. Sure its a bloody waste. But it would keep me happy and my family paid. Why would I be eager to throw myself into the american corporate world?

Because this outdated mentality is leaving Japan further and further behind in the modern global economy. Case in point - look at all the innovation in tech. It's all from young, brilliant individuals - mostly from the US. The things we take for granted in our daily lives - Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote etc. were all developed by people either in college or just after. Dropbox was just valued at $10bn!

Japanese society does not provide an environment for this type of individualism to really shine. Employment is decided in your third year of college, if you're lucky. I've been here almost 7 years and it's crystal clear to me now. The thought of "lifetime employment" sounded appealing to me upon arrival, but in actual fact, it's bringing the entire country down. As a few have mentioned above, once the senior members of staff enter their 50s and even 60s, they can just sit back, relax & watch the money roll in. Meanwhile, the potentially brilliant young minds are 'moulded' to conform with outdated ideals, or be hung out to dry.

It's an absolute crying shame. It really is.