More than 850,000 recruits nationwide marked their first day of work Monday in an improving job market stemming from economic growth and the looming massive retirement of baby boomers.

Many of them attended initiation ceremonies held by their employers -- companies and the central and local governments -- on the first business day of fiscal 2007.

"We must be a front-runner in terms of quality that can contribute to society, not in terms of sales units or sales value," Toyota Motor Corp. President Katsuaki Watanabe told about 1,700 new employees at Japan's No. 1 automaker in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture.