Japan has long been famous for its high-intensity working culture, but recent official statistics show that workers in this country are working fewer hours than some other developed economies.
According to data released by the Cabinet Office in January, in fiscal year 2024 ending March 31, last year, a Japanese worker worked an average of 1,654.2 hours, down 17.7 hours compared to the previous year. This is the second consecutive year the number of working hours has decreased.
This figure is lower than the level of 1,796 hours for Americans, 1,865 hours for South Korea, 1,697 hours for Canada and 1,709 hours for Italy in the same period, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. However, Japan is still higher than Germany with 1,331 hours and Denmark with 1,379 hours.
Compared to the peak of 2,121 hours in 1980, when the bubble economy peaked, the working hours of a Japanese person today have decreased significantly. This change is seen as the result of many reform efforts to cope with "karoshi", the term for death from overwork.
Mr. Martin Schulz - economist at Fujitsu's Global Market Intelligence Unit - said that in the 1990s, the Japanese government sought to improve productivity from a relatively low level, but as a result, the number of karoshi cases increased. 2001 recorded a record of 143 cases recognized as deaths from overwork, followed by 115 cases in 2002.
Stepping into the new century, the need to balance work and life is raised more clearly. When Mr. Shinzo Abe took office as Prime Minister in 2006, curbing karoshi became a policy priority. The goal is to help people have more time for family and childbirth, while improving productivity.
One of the solutions is to attract more women to join the labor force and encourage the elderly to continue working after the age of 65. The average working hours decreased in the first decade of the century and continued to decline after the Working Style Reform Act was enacted in 2019.
According to this law, overtime is limited to 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year, although some industries such as healthcare and construction are allowed to exceed the ceiling under certain conditions. Although loopholes still exist in implementation, new data shows that the trend of working hours reduction in Japan is becoming clearer.
