Japan may not be a failed state or a basket case; however, it is a country where the workforce is being put under further pressure to work ever more hours for ever less return.
For example, due to societal and work pressures people now work so much overtime in Japan it is ridiculous. The government even had to bring in regulations to stop people from working so much because there was a scandal where people literally kept working themselves to death by doing so much overtime.
Also, retirement is becoming a thing for the rich in Japan simply because people can’t afford to stop working because of both financial pressures and societal pressures to play your part to keep society going. For example, 64 percent of people in Japan report that they will work past retirement age.
The paradox is, the more pressure the Japanese workforce is put under to work the fewer children they have, the fewer children they have, the more workers they need and so the more pressure the workforce is put under to work more hours and keep working well past retirement.
It has to be remembered as well that Japan may have dropped below the sustainable population level in the mid-1970s, but since then the decline has been slow and steady so the effects are not yet being fully felt. But the reason behind the slow and steady fall is becoming ever more apparent.
The more workers are needed, the more pressure is put on the workforce, which translates to people having fewer children, which translates to the next generation being put under more pressure to work, which translates to people having fewer children, and on and on it goes.
Japan did make efforts to try to address this problem and did see a small increase in the birth rate in the early 2010s (they came up with lots of child friendly policies); however, because in Japanese culture the woman typically still when she has a child becomes a stay-at-home mother, it put further strain on the workforce due to women leaving it to have the children.
Paradoxically, this put more pressure on those in the workforce to work evermore hours, including the women, which meant that the policy effectively backfired and the steady decline has returned.
If the trend continues over several or more generations, inevitably that is when the real problems will start to become apparent. At current, because the older generation keeps working and because the birth rate only dropped below 1.5 in the early 90s, which means it’s only been what you would call properly low for just under 30 years, the true effects of Japan’s falling birthrate have not yet been felt. Just early signs of it.
But, those early signs are an overworked population who are under pressure to work all the time and never retire, stagnation, falling living standards and much more. That inevitably is the sign of the developed world model, so of working and achieving a good lifework balance, then retiring, collapsing, and being replaced by a work work work until you die while getting ever less return model. Something which is not sustainable.
The UK, Europe and the US et cetera are already feeling signs of it, but it will take much longer for the effects to be truly felt due to immigration. But the principle remains, as is shown by places like Japan, the longer the problem goes on, the more difficult it is to address it due to the paradox of the need for workers to keep society going i.e. the fewer children we have the more we need workers in the workforce, the more we need workers in the workforce, the fewer children we have.
Breaking this trend is imperative for this century. Inevitably, the answer comes from finding a way to use technology to increase productivity in a way that is not as labour-intensive as modern technology has made it, doing this would allow more people to work less, allowing more to focus on having families. Perhaps working from home will help. Time will tell.
But it is a problem that needs to be solved, otherwise people are going to increasingly find that the only option is to work, work, and work and get less less less. That is not sustainable.
