Japan’s New Industry Turning Down Jobs

日本新产业：帮你推掉offer

 

Graduates with multiple offers hire specialists to reject would-be employers

拿到多份offer的毕业生寻求专家的帮助来拒绝潜在雇主

 

Self-help books overflow with advice on how to say “no”, one of the trickiest words in any language. Doing so is a problem for Japanese university graduates in particular since, unlike their peers in many other countries, they are deluged with job offers: an average of three each last year.

 

自助类书籍中有许多教人们如何说“不”（在任何语言中都是最难说出口的词汇之一）的建议。对于日本大学毕业生来说，这尤其是一大难题，不同于其他国家的同龄人，他们总能收到数不胜数的offer：去年平均每人收到了3份offer。

 

“They have no idea of how to deal with it,” says Shimizu Takahisa, a lawyer. His firm, Kawagoe Mizuho, is part of the mini-industry that has sprung up to take the job off their hands, so to speak.

 

律师清水贵久说：“他们不知道该如何处理这些offer。”可以说，由此催生了一个帮人推掉offer的微型产业，清水贵久所创办的川越瑞穗正是这样一家公司。

 

Those who do not use a law firm offering “job-rejection services” can always turn to career consultants, who provide templates of polite no-thank-yous. There are even a few specialist job-rejection firms, such as Reccel, which for just ¥19,800 yen ($185) will convey the bad news to up to five would-be employers.

 

除了律师事务所外，人们还可以寻求职业顾问的帮助，他们能够为你提供礼貌推掉offer的模板。甚至还有一些专业帮人推掉offer的公司，例如Reccel公司，你只需花上19800日元（约合185美元），他们就能帮你推掉5份offer。

 

Recoiling recruits need not speak a single word either to the firms they plan to jilt or to Reccel itself – the entire process can be arranged through Line, a messaging app.

 

你甚至无需与发出offer的公司以及Reccel公司有任何接触，全程通过Line（一款通讯应用）即可安排妥当。

 

An ageing population and restrictive immigration policies have left Japan with more jobs than jobseekers. Employers compete fiercely to hire talented youngsters and are reluctant to dismiss those they do manage to hire.

 

人口老龄化和限制性移民政策使得日本的岗位空缺多于求职者人数。雇主们为了争取优秀的年轻人而展开了激烈的竞争，同时他们也不愿解雇现有的员工。

 

If they need to cut costs, they are more likely to “adjust wages rather than headcounts”, says Yamaguchi Takeshi of Morgan Stanley. Firms worry that having fired staff (which the law makes difficult anyway) might put off recruits, notes Hugh Patrick of Columbia University.

 

摩根士丹利的山口武表示，如果日本企业想要削减成本，他们更有可能会通过“降薪，而非裁员”。哥伦比亚大学的休·帕特里克指出，企业担心裁员（日本法律使得企业解雇员工很难）将不利于后续招新。

 

Covid-19 may change things somewhat. The ratio of jobs to applicants hit a three-year low of 1.39 in March, well before the full effects of the virus were felt. Surveys suggest that firms plan to trim hiring further.

 

但新冠肺炎可能会让情况有所不同。今年3月，日本岗位空缺与求职者人数的比率降至1.39，创下近3年以来的新低，但这还远未降至最低点。据调查显示，各企业还有进一步裁员的计划。

 

Most of the pain will be felt by part-time and casual workers, who make up 38% of the workforce, are easier to sack and tend to skew younger and more female. (In late April the government announced the extension of unemployment benefits to such workers as part of its coronavirus response.)

 

最受伤害将是占总劳动力38%的兼职工和临时工，他们以年轻人和女性居多，往往更容易被解雇。（4月下旬，作为应对新冠肺炎疫情措施的一部分，政府宣布将失业津贴的发放范围扩大至此类人群。）

 

Analysts at Goldman Sachs think Japan’s unemployment rate will rise more in the coming months than it did during the global financial crisis – to 4.2%.

 

高盛的分析师认为，在未来几个月，日本的失业率将超过全球金融危机时期的水平，或达4.2%。

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