TOKYO - Even as they continue working, a growing number of people in non-regular employment are unable to escape poverty, widening inequality across Japan and raising questions over whether politics has truly confronted the problem head-on.
At the end of the year in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district, where temperatures had fallen below seasonal averages, a noticeable change was seen at a food distribution event for people struggling to make ends meet. “I work in construction, but because I don’t have enough money, I often rely on soup kitchens,” one man said quietly. Although he had a job, he was among a rising number of people who cannot survive on their income alone.
After the New Year, a weekly food distribution held in front of a station drew a record 962 people. Many of those lining up were non-regular workers. Organizers said they were seeing more people who had been just barely managing but were now unable to cope as prices continued to rise. “How to deal with higher prices and how to deliver support quickly is an urgent issue,” one staff member said.
According to available data, the number of non-regular workers who remain in financial hardship despite working has reached 8.9 million. The poverty of non-regular workers is becoming a defining feature of Japan’s widening inequality. “Today’s non-regular workers in Japan can fairly be described as an underclass,” one expert said. “Japanese society is in a truly critical state.”
A 55-year-old man living in Fukuoka Prefecture knows this reality firsthand. He had been earning about 140,000 yen a month as a non-regular employee before his contract was terminated in June last year. Since then, he has survived on part-time work at a bread factory earning 8,000 yen a day. Unable to pay repair costs, his bathroom has gone largely unused and now serves as a place to hang laundry. He bathes at a public bathhouse three times a week. Inside his refrigerator are discounted items marked with half-price stickers. He has about 3,000 yen in cash, a total of just over 4,000 yen on hand, and a bank balance of 589 yen. “Until my next paycheck comes in, I have no choice but to scrape by,” he said.
His struggles began during his job-hunting days as a university student in the mid-1990s, when companies sharply reduced hiring after the burst of the bubble economy. He failed more than 60 job applications by the time he completed graduate school. He eventually joined a company but quit at age 40 due to power harassment and what he described as a rigid corporate culture. Since then, he has moved from one non-regular job to another. “I wonder if this poverty will just continue,” he said. “Thinking about having to keep living like this makes me feel faint.”
Single and approaching old age, he worries about the future. “I can’t get married because I’m poor,” he said. “There’s no family to take care of me. I worry I’ll just die quietly one day without anyone noticing.”
Kenji Hashimoto, a professor at Waseda University who analyzes inequality using data, warns that Japan’s workforce is effectively being split into two groups. Excluding part-time workers supported by a spouse’s stable income, the number of non-regular workers now stands at about 8.9 million, roughly one in seven people in the labor force. Hashimoto refers to this group as the “underclass.”
“In principle, the working class should earn enough to form families and raise children,” he said. “But most non-regular workers today do not earn such wages. As a result, the majority remain unmarried because they cannot afford marriage or child-rearing. This is fundamentally different from past forms of labor.”
Hashimoto’s research shows that the average annual income of underclass workers under age 59 is about 2.16 million yen, less than half that of regular employees. No matter how hard they work, escaping poverty is difficult, and inequality tends to become entrenched. As this group grows larger, he warns, social cohesion erodes. “In a society with widening inequality, solidarity disappears, hostility increases, and people stop helping one another. Society as a whole becomes sick.”
The impact is also visible among families. At a children’s cafeteria that provides free breakfasts every Wednesday, a woman in her 30s raising two children alone said the support was invaluable. She divorced her husband, who had been a regular employee, last year. While life had been comfortable before, it became difficult almost overnight after the divorce. Working from home on outsourced jobs while caring for her children, she earns up to 150,000 yen a month at best, with some months bringing no income at all. Rising food prices have forced her to rely on food banks. Although she receives some child support and public assistance, unstable income remains her greatest concern. Despite applying for more than 20 full-time positions, she has not been hired, often feeling that being a single mother works against her in interviews.
Another woman, now in her 50s, still keeps a letter written by her child more than a decade ago thanking her for working so hard. After divorcing in her 30s due to domestic violence, she developed PTSD and depression and left her full-time job. She later worked short-term positions and even night shifts at a snack bar to support her children. Although she eventually obtained social welfare qualifications and increased her annual income to just under 2 million yen, she still sends more than 1 million yen a year to support her children in university and continues to rely on sex work during periods of heavy expenses. “Sometimes I think it would be fine if I just quietly died one day,” she said, adding that she no longer expects much from politics.
A large-scale survey conducted by Hashimoto in 2022 found that the voices of the underclass rarely reach the political system. Many lack the time or energy to engage in politics, and voter turnout among them is low. By contrast, a small but affluent group that opposes income redistribution and accepts inequality tends to vote consistently and wields disproportionate political influence.
Some companies have begun addressing inequality on their own. Aeon Retail, which employs more than 90,000 non-regular workers, has introduced a system allowing experienced non-regular employees to gain equal treatment with regular staff or transition to full-time status after passing exams. So far, 350 workers have qualified. One single mother working in a liquor section said her income had increased by about 1.5 times, allowing her to take out a car loan for her son, something she could not have done before.
Experts warn, however, that relying on isolated corporate efforts is not enough. Kohei Komamura, a professor specializing in social security, cautions that postponing decisive action will only deepen dissatisfaction and anxiety, potentially fueling populist politics and creating a vicious cycle of instability.
As political parties promote measures such as equal pay for equal work and higher minimum wages, the question remains whether politics can finally confront inequality in a sustained and meaningful way. “For years, non-regular work was framed as a personal choice,” Hashimoto said. “But surveys show that more than 70 percent of those labeled ‘freeters’ actually wanted regular jobs. Leaving this issue unaddressed for so long is a major political failure.”
With Japan’s economic growth slowing, the population shrinking, and inequality deepening, experts argue that neither quick fixes nor complacency will restore stability. They say politicians must focus on balancing interests and maintaining social cohesion, while voters themselves must face reality and engage rather than leaving politics to others.
Source: TBS
