Photo/Illutration People who received informal job offers wear mouth shields at a welcome ceremony of Pasona Group Inc. in Awaji, Hyogo Prefecture, on Oct. 1. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Informal job offers were given to 69.8 percent of university students who are scheduled to graduate next spring, the first rate under 70 percent in five years, according to government figures.

The novel coronavirus pandemic was a large reason for the ratio to drop by 7.0 percentage points year on year, according to a survey by the labor and education ministries released on Nov. 17.

The percentage was as of Oct. 1, when companies make their employment offers official.

It was the sharpest decline since the plunge of 7.4 percentage points for the class of 2010 in the aftermath of the global economic crisis triggered by the 2008 collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

The survey collected data of 4,770 students from 24 national and public universities and 38 private universities.

The informal job offer rate for students in the humanities was 68.7 percent, down 7.5 points year-on-year, while the rate for science majors was 74.5 percent, a drop of 4.8 points.

The employment rate of university students who graduated in spring this year reached a record-high 98.0 percent, partly because of personnel shortages caused by the declining birthrate and aging population.

In normal years, the informal job offer rate tends to rise toward the end of a fiscal year.
But the employment rate for the class of 2010 ended up 3.9 percentage points lower compared with the previous year.

“Corporate recruiting sessions have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so university students started their job-hunting activities later than usual, and some industries have been downsizing their recruitments,” a labor ministry official said. “It is difficult to project how the informal job offer rate will make a transition.”

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