Job offers to students set to graduate from universities and graduate schools next March fell 15.1 percent from a year earlier to 683,000 amid the coronavirus pandemic, logging the sharpest drop in a decade, a research institute said Thursday.
The estimated fall in job offers by private companies reflected moves by such major companies as ANA Holdings Inc., Japan Airlines Co. and H.I.S. Co. to suspend recruitment for new graduates in the coming spring.
The ratio of job offers to applicants worsened for the second year in a row to 1.53 from 1.83, the steepest fall since 2011, when the labor market was still reeling from the 2009 global financial crisis, according to the Recruit Works Institute, a research division of Recruit Holdings Co.