Monday's data on how recent Japanese college graduates are faring in the job market show that, despite a slight improvement, the overall picture remains grim. About 64% of the 559,000 graduates who spilled out of the nation's colleges in March have since landed a job, a roughly two percentage point rise from the previous year, according to figures from the education ministry.

But around 4% - or about 22,000 - of those aren't deemed regular employees because they are on fixed contracts, limited to 30- to 40-hours of work per week.

Nearly 14% of the overall number had already entered postgraduate education at the time of the survey.

Making up the remainder are 19,500 part-time workers, including temporary workers and interns, scraping by on contracts valid for less than a year and putting in under 30 hours per week.

Meanwhile, around 15% of graduates don't yet have a job or are not in further education.

All told, around 128,000 graduates have yet to secure regular full-time employment.