41 of 100 big firms to hire fewer grads next spring
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Forty-one of 100 major companies will hire fewer people fresh out of college and high schools in spring 2010 than they will this spring, a Yomiuri Shimbun survey has found, presaging a tough job-hunting season for graduating seniors.
The figure is a sharp rise from the previous survey, in which six companies said they would hire fewer graduates in spring 2009 than they did the previous spring.
Meanwhile, seven companies said they would employ more graduates next spring than they will this spring. This is a steep decline from the previous survey, in which 31 companies said they would hire more people in spring 2009 than they did the previous years.
The survey was conducted in the first half of March, asking 100 major companies how many graduates they planned to hire in spring 2010. The graduates in question are people who have just finished universities, graduate school, junior college, specialized vocational high school or high school.
Many of the 41 companies belong to the auto, electronics and precision machinery industries, whose overseas sales have plunged.
Of 16 companies in the three industries, 12 said they would hire fewer graduates, while three said they had not decided how many they would hire next spring. The only company that said it planned to hire about the same number of graduates as it will this spring is Mitsubishi Electric Corp., which expects to post consolidated profits in fiscal 2008, which ends this month.
Toyota Motor Corp. will hire 1,080 graduates, nearly half the number of hires this spring. NEC Corp. will hire 100, down about 90 percent from this year.
Among financial institutions, which have been hit hard by the global financial crisis, three megabanks will hire far fewer graduates next spring. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ said it would hire 57 percent less, or 850 people fewer, than it will this spring.
Thirty-one companies provided specific figures on new hires for spring 2010. The total is about 12,500 jobs, only about half of the figure projected in the previous survey for spring 2009.
The seven companies that plan to hire more graduates next spring are ones that rely on domestic demand, including Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Tokyo Gas Co. But their total hires are just 3,774–a modest rise of 15 percent compared with the figure the seven companies projected for spring 2009.
Thirty-six companies, many of them in the telecommunications and transport sectors, said they would hire as many graduates as they will this spring. The figure was six fewer than in the previous survey.
(Mar. 29, 2009)
EDUCATION IN JAPAN COMMUNITY Blog 