The government has decided to expand the scope of its job support program for socially withdrawn people, which is limited to those 39 or younger, to include people in their early 40s, labor ministry officials said Saturday.
Many people aged 40 to 44 have been living as hikikomori (recluses) who shut themselves in at home, or NEETs, an acronym for "not in education, employment or training," because of the hardships they suffered during Japan's "employment ice age," the officials said.
After the implosion of Japan's bubble economy at the turn of the 1990s, many young Japanese had difficulty finding regular employment as companies pared payrolls and personnel expenses. Some of those frozen out by this so-called employment ice age, often defined as between 1993 and 2005, are believed to have become socially withdrawn.