More than half in Japan happy to have switched jobs, survey shows

Slightly more than half of the people in Japan who have changed jobs are happy to have done so, a recent government survey showed.

Among respondents who made a switch between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2020, 53.4% said they are satisfied with their new jobs, while 11.4% said they are not, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey released earlier this month.

The survey polled some 10,000 people who had changed their jobs from some 17,000 offices with five or more employees.

The gap between satisfied and dissatisfied workers stood at 42 percentage points, close to the 43 percentage point difference in the previous survey in 2015.

“Labor conditions have improved under working practice reforms, and it appears that people are finding their new jobs rewarding,” said an official in charge of the survey.

Japan’s conventional work practices of lifetime employment, promotion by seniority and hiring of fresh graduates are gradually loosening, while the country has been carrying out reforms to cut its notoriously long working hours that have been blamed for causing deaths.

The latest survey also showed men tend to be happier after changing jobs than women.

A total of 56.4% of male respondents were satisfied and 9.9% were discontent, compared with 49.3% and 13.4%, respectively, for female respondents.

Women’s dissatisfaction was more than 10 percentage points higher than men in terms of tasks, working hours and relations with coworkers.

A report by the World Economic Forum, a Swiss-based think tank, showed the share of women working part-time was almost twice that of men and the average Japanese woman’s income was 43.7% lower than that of their male counterparts.

Among the 76.6% of survey respondents who switched jobs for personal reasons, 28.2% cited working conditions, excluding wages, as their reason for the switch.

It was followed by 26% who were dissatisfied with their tasks and 23.8% who thought they were underpaid.