White Paper on State of Overwork in Japan Highlights Links to Depression

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s 2023 white paper on karōshi (death by overwork) shows that actual weekly working hours tend to be longer for men (the darker, longer bar in the graph below), with 10.1% of men working more than 60 hours a week, as compared to 4.2% of women. The breakdown by age group shows that this percentage was highest for women in their twenties at 4.9%, while 13.2% of men in their forties, and 11.6% of men in their thirties or fifties worked more than 60 hours a week.

The breakdown of statistics by occupation shows that the self-employed worked the longest on average, with 7.8% of women and 15.4% of men working more than 60 hours a week.

As daily working hours get longer, with fatigue lingering to the next morning, there is greater chance of depression. The white paper found that 26.8% of those working more than 60 hours a week suspected that they had some form of depression or anxiety.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)