Work

How Does the First Job Matter for an Individual’s Career Life in Japan?

Year: 2011

Type: preprint

Abstract: Exploiting annual career records of female workers constructed from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), this paper examines how the first job matters for an individual’s future job career. Using the regional unemployment rate in the year of graduation as an instrument for the first job status (i.e., regular job or not), we confirm that an individual’s first job status matters significantly for the future job status even for female workers in Japan, although the effect gradually declines over the years and effectively disappears within around ten years from graduation. However, the observed first job effect appears to depend on the post-graduation career path taken by an individual, in the sense that someone who was unsuccessful during the first job hunt at the time of graduation can make up for the negative effect if she is lucky enough to secure a job as a regular employee within a reasonable time period.

Source: RePEc: Research Papers in Economics

Authors: Junya Hamaaki, Masahiro Hori, Saeko Maeda, Keiko Murata

Institutions: Hitotsubashi University, Government of Japan, Economic and Social Research Institute, Cabinet Office, Tokyo Metropolitan University

Language: English

Topic: Labor market dynamics and wage inequality

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Decent work and economic growth, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Award: Changes in the economic factors related to the households' lifetime income in the two lost decades : Evidence from Japanese Micro Data