The Abandoned Generation (棄民世代, Kimin Sedai), defined by the author, is a group of people born between 1971 and 1984 which suffered greatly due to the burst of the Japanese Estate Price Bubble (バブル景気, Baburu Keiki or 平成景気, Heisei Keiki) and the following Employment Ice Age (就職氷河期, Shuushoku Hyougaki) which caused high unemployment nationwide in Japan. They are also referred by the term Employment Ice Age Generation (就職氷河期世代, Shuushoku Hyougaki Sedai) and Lost Generation (失われた世代, Ushinawareta Sedai).
During the Employment Ice Age, the talent and job search ratio dropped below 0.60, accompanied by a sharp rise of unemployment rate to higher than 5%. It especially hit hard against young male employees as their unemployment rate reached 11.6% which is the highest since 1968. This resulted in a drastic increase of freeter (フリーター, Furita, describe a group of people especially the youth who don’t seek for a stable employment and instead work as a part-time when in need) and part-timers population. The loosing of the Temporary Staffing Services Law (労働者派遣法, Roudousha Dekenho) after the review in 1996 and 2004, meaning more corporates are able to hire great proportion of part-timers in order to reduce their manpower costs, resulted in large amount of workers who otherwise qualified for a full time employment, get employed as a part-timer instead. From 1999 to 2019, the percentage of part-timers in the total female and male workforces had increased from 39.8% to 56.2% and 11.1% to 22.4% respectively. Note on the differences between the female and male statistics. Peculiarly, a great amount of workers aged between 15 and 24 years old work as a part-timer regardless of their gender, which could be seen from the data provided by the author (45.2% to 57.1% for female, 33.7% to 47.6% for male).
Now coming back to the differences between the female and male statistics. When we see the overall picture of the workforce in Japan, there were 9.16 million full-time employees and 3.15 million part-time employees among the Abandoned Generation in 2008. The population barely changed for the full-time employees in 2018 (9.15 million), but the part-timers had been increased to 3.71 million. The author found out that male workforces were able to obtain a full-time job as their full-time employees’ population increased and part-time employees’ population decreased in 2018. On the other side of the coin, female workforces suffered a decrease of about 280 thousand of full-time employees and an increase of about 930 thousand of part-time employees. It is speculated by the author that it might due to the discriminatory hire strategy from the market where women were expected to have maternity leave during their employment. Even after the reform of Abenomics (安倍ノミクス, Abe No Mikusu), most of them doesn’t experience much wage raise and sometime even with worsen wage. Compare to their Bubble Generation (バブル世代, Baburu Sedai) counterpart, they have an average annual income difference of ¥400 to ¥800 thousand. Even when comparing to their younger counterpart, Yutori Generation (ゆとり世代, Yutori Sedai), their annual income is still lower. It is also a direct and indirect factor of high amount of Hikikomori (引きこもり, or known as acute social withdrawal, is a total withdrawal from society and seeking extreme degrees of social isolation and confinement) and NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) population, which increased from 300.5 thousand in 1997 to 390 thousand in 2018.
Not only does the aftermath of the burst of the Japanese Estate Price Bubble affected the Abandoned Generation in their economic life, it also muddles their marital status regardless of their gender. In 2005, 31.2% of men and 18.7% of women aged between 35 and 39 years old, and 22.7% of men and 12.2% of women aged between 40 and 44 years old were single. In 2015, however, the figure rose to 35% of men and 23.9% of women aged between 35 and 39 years old, and 30% of men and 19.3% of women aged between 40 and 44 years old were single.
And since there are a great proportion of people from the Abandoned Generation work as self-employed or part-time. This resulted in a low payment from National Pension (国民年金, Kokumin Nenkin), mandatory to all residents in Japan aged between 20 and 60 years old, which is pushing these people into poor economic condition. Even if they are officially employed by the corporate, since their salary are often lower (compare to their peers), the payment from the Employee’s Pension Insurance (厚生年金, Kousei Nenkin) will also become lower unless they were lucky to be employed as a full-time employee when they were fresh graduates. Such phenomenon could be observed when we look closer to the average annual income earned by workforce aged from 35 to 44 years old, where those who employed as a full-time employee immediately as a fresh graduate enjoy ¥5.307 million, and those who later be converted from being a part-timer to full time employee has only a salary of ¥4.007 million. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the Abandoned Generation that has a chance to sign in to Employee’s Pension Insurance doesn’t sign for it continuously for 40 years. This fact is important because from the optimistic projection from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (厚生労働省, Kousei Roudou Shou) about income replacement ratio was that it will decrease to 60.2% in 2024 (it was 61.7% in 2020), and plummeted to 50.8% in 2040 due to sub-replacement fertility. It is with the assumption that the income replacement ratio is based on 40-year-sign-in of Employee’s Pension Insurance, which mean it could be worse for the Abandoned Generation.
Note: There is another way to have pension in Japan: corporate’s own annuities and retirement benefits policies.
The situation appeared to be even worse as we look closer to the National Pension Insured Survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare once every three years. We see two interesting facts. First, there are 31.8% people aged between 20 and 34 years old who were overdue their payment for the National Pension in 2005. The figure decreased to just 18.0% in 2019, and from here we can see the immediate effect of the economic crisis at the time to the Abandoned Generation. Second, the total amount of people aged between 35 and 49 years old who applied for full exemption from the pension payment was 970 thousand in 2019, which is a staggering increase from 610 thousand. This indicates that the situation faced by Abandoned Generation not only doesn’t get improved overtime, but also worse compare to their older generation. The author argued that it is due to the large amount of people who couldn’t afford to pay their pension payment when they were young since they faced quite a hard time in employment.
Not only does the Abandoned Generation suffered under disadvantageous economic condition, but also mental issues. Based on the statistics gathered by Federation of Inochi No Denwa (FIND, 日本いのちの電話連盟, Nihon Inochi No Denwa Renmei), there were 167,820 or 23% of the total number of calls (725,857, where 367,199 are male, 358,658 are female) where individuals age around 30 (87,911 of them are from male and 79,909 from female) called to the hotline seeking for consultancy in 2008. 17,731 of them have suicidal tendency, which is 27% of the total number of suicidal calls (64,488). After ten years (2018), these people, now age around 40, made 23.7% of the total number of calls (627,475, where 309,565 are male, 317,910 are female) or 148,816 calls. And those who have suicidal thoughts made 28.3% of the total number of suicidal call (68,398) or 18,373 calls. We can see that among the Abandoned Generation, they face serious mental issues and stress as the statistics barely improved on them.
Among the people that lived in poverty, 19.4% of them are seniors, which is higher than average compare to international community. The author predicts that this percentage will reach 30% as the Abandoned Generation reaching the age.