For university students graduating this spring, finding jobs is not an easy task. As of February, about 80 percent of them had found work, the third lowest percentage on record. The situation for students graduating next year is expected to be a little better.
Job interviews for students who will graduate next year began this month. But in recent years employers have been steadily pushing forward the date when they begin trying to seek out promising prospective employees. Facing criticism that this practice is negatively impacting university students' studies, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), Japan's leading business lobby, last year revised its guideline, and as a result many businesses pushed back their search for prospective employees from October to December for students in their junior year.
Companies that mainly rely on domestic demand expect that the reconstruction of areas devastated by the 3/11 disasters will increase their business opportunities. A growing number of firms in the fields of distribution, services, information and food plan to hire more recruits in fiscal 2013.