How the Pandemic Changed Work in Japan: Bearing Witness through Data

The COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe from 2019 had a major impact on the way people lived and worked. People refrained from going out and, inevitably, the way people worked underwent drastic changes. What kind of working environment enabled people to best adapt to the emergency? Did the pandemic impact urban and rural areas differently? How did the pandemic affect workers with children? This book adopts a thoroughly data-driven approach, relying primarily on data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Employment Dynamics by the Recruit Works Institute. The JPSED has been tracking a sample of 50,000 people since 2016, and is thus one of largest of the very few surveys in Japan that has tracked the same individuals since before the pandemic. Eleven scholars and researchers examined the pandemic's impact on working styles and analyzed the data from various perspectives to identify changes in the labor market in Japan, including telework, work-childcare relations, and disparities in employment status, which makes the book a valuable historical testimony of a distinct turning point in Japan's work culture.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Foreword: Bearing Witness to History Through Data Y?ji Genda Introduction: Survey Overview and Common Figures and Charts Recruit Works Institute 1 Flexibility in Working Styles and New Disparities Isamu Yamamoto 2 Examining the Polarization of Employment in Japan Hiroshi Teruyama 3 Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Regional Differences Masahiro Abe 4 The Impact of the Pandemic on Changes and Disparities in Job Satisfaction K?ichi Kume 5 Pandemic-Induced Inequalities by Firm Size Hiroyuki Motegi 6 Inequality of Opportunities for Career Mobility in Japan Satoshi Miwa 7 Transition to Telework: Establishment, Continuity and Outcomes Makiko Hagihara 8 Preventing Isolation and Collective Bargaining Y?ji Genda 9 Consequences of Furloughs for Employees: Impacts on Income, Job Satisfaction and Well-Being Souichi Ohta 10 The Impact and Effectiveness of Furlough Allowances K?ichi Kume 11 Changes in Parents' Work-Life Balance Midori Otani 12 The Significance of "Learning" for Working Adults: Did 2020 Change Learning? Yawen Sun 13 Conclusion: Putting it All Together: What Changed and What Stayed the Same? Y?ji Genda Afterword and Acknowledgments Makiko Hagihara Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Yuji Genda, Editor, is a professor at the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo. Born in 1964, he graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo in 1988. He served as a visiting researcher at Harvard University and the University of Oxford and a professor at Gakushuin University before his current position. He holds a Ph.D. in economics.