Revisiting Japan’s Lost Generation

The long “employment ice age” that followed the collapse of the 1980s economic bubble gave birth to a generation of Japanese people, now in their late thirties to early fifties, for whom job insecurity is a way of life. Three years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we revisit this Lost Generation and its ongoing challenges.

Photo: Women head toward a test center to sit for a civil service exam geared to mid-career applicants in Musashino, Tokyo, on November 29, 2020. Many members of Japan’s Lost Generation missed the opportunity to secure permanent employment after graduation. (© Jiji.)