53.4% of Japan’s workers satisfied with job change

The recently released survey conducted by the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry found that 53.4% of respondents said they are satisfied with their new jobs, while 11.4% said they are not.

About 10,000 people who had changed jobs from around 17,000 offices with five or more employees responded to the survey. They were people who switched jobs between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020.

The gap between the satisfied and dissatisfied stood at 42.0 percentage points, which is slightly lower than the 43.0 percentage-point difference in the previous survey conducted in 2015.

The recent survey also showed men tend to be happier after changing jobs than women, with 56.4% of male respondents saying they were satisfied, and 9.9% saying they were discontent, compared with 49.3% and 13.4%, respectively, for female respondents.

Women’s dissatisfaction was more than 10 percentage points higher than men in terms of tasks, working hours and relations with coworkers.

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Out of the 76.6% of the survey respondents who switched jobs for personal reasons, 28.2% cited working conditions, excluding wages, as their reason for the switch, followed by 26.0% who were dissatisfied with their tasks and 23.8% who thought they were underpaid, according to Kyodo.