【Aging, safety net and fiscal crisis in Japan】No.99: Sharp Increase in Percentage of Non-regular Employees

In February 2018, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released a report on the labor force survey conducted in 2017. While labor shortage is pointed out in the report, the number of people employed increased from 45.36 million in 1991 to 54.60 million in 2017. This increase is largely attributed to the fact that the employment rate of married females in the age group of 20 to 39 has increased significantly, as depicted in Column No.97.

As shown in Figure 1, the number of male regular employees decreased from 25.18 million in 1991 to 23.10 million in 2017. In contrast, the number of non-regular employees increased three times for males and doubled for females during the same period. As a result, the percentage of non-regular employees among the total employees has increased from 19.8% in 1991, to 30.4% in 2003, and to 37.3% in 2017.

（Source）Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications