In his 1986 autobiography Made in Japan, Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony, said this about his homeland’s rise to industrial pre-eminence: “While the US has been busy creating lawyers, we have been busier creating engineers.”
A quarter-century ago, Japanese companies and their diligent, technically adept workers had the global economy by the tail.
Their grip faltered in the 1990s, with the bursting of the country’s asset bubble. But even today many in Japan are counting on advanced technology to shelter their industries from South Korean and Taiwanese competition.
Yet while Japan still churns out few lawyers, it is not producing many engineers either. Two-thirds of manufacturing companies surveyed by the industry ministry last year said they were short of highly skilled technology workers, in spite of a historically soft labour market.
According to the Rose project, a Norwegian-funded survey of attitudes towards science in 25 countries, Japanese secondary school students respond more negatively to the proposition “I would like to get a job in technology” than any of their global peers.
“Students don’t want to go into maths and science,” worries Hiroaki Nakanishi, president of Hitachi. “Today’s university graduates don’t have the skills they need to do their jobs.”
The drought of technologists sits oddly with broader worries about unemployment. At just 4.9 per cent, Japan’s jobless rate is low by international standards. But it has risen from less than 4 per cent before the global economic crisis and below 3 per cent in Mr Morita’s day.
What is more, the official unemployment rate disguises the true state of companies’ demand for workers.
In the depths of the global economic crisis in 2009, the industry ministry put “latent” joblessness at nearly 14 per cent of the workforce, or 9m people.
It said most of those still had jobs due to “labour hoarding”, jargon for a reluctance to sack staff during downturns.
Strict Japanese labour laws make “involuntary” lay-offs unfeasible for all but the frailest companies. The best that most can do is to buy off surplus staff with early retirement.
That has hampered the ability to shift production offshore in response to the yen’s surge to a 15-year high. Some, such as Sony, have closed factories at home, but others are promising to maintain domestic production capacity even as they build plants in China, Thailand or Mexico.
Not every Japanese worker has benefited from constraints on sacking. A third of the workforce is now on temporary contracts, which pay less and offer little protection. Companies that cannot easily push out older employees hire fewer young ones.
As of December, only seven in 10 students in their final year of university had secured job offers, the lowest level on record and a sign that official unemployment could head higher.
The young no longer see manufacturing as a secure career. Employers ranked most attractive by students in a survey by Recruit, a publisher, were current or former state-owned service groups – a travel agency, two railways and the post office. Toyota ranked 82nd and Sony was 77th.
Companies are responding by looking outside Japan for researchers and product developers. Two-thirds of manufacturers plan to conduct some R&D abroad within five years, according to another industry ministry survey, compared with less than half five years ago.
Nitto Denko is an electronic-materials maker that has developed a “photographic” polymer capable of generating moving 3D holograms.
Research on the polymer was carried out jointly by a Nitto Denko lab in California and the University of Arizona.
Toshihiko Omote, deputy chief technology officer at Nitto Denko, says the high calibre of US universities was one reason the company decided to set up a research facility there. Another was the flexibility of US labour arrangements.
“In the US you can hire high-level researchers on short-term contracts for specific projects,” he says. “That’s difficult to do in Japan.”
在1986年出版的自传《日本制造》(Made in Japan)中，索尼(Sony)公司共同创始人盛田昭夫 (Akio Morita)在谈到日本是如何一跃成为工业强国时说道：“当美国人忙于培养律师时，我们更加忙于培养工程师。”
25年前，日本企业和它们勤奋、精通技术的工人们，主宰了世界经济。
到了上世纪90年代，随着日本资产泡沫的破灭，他们的影响力开始减弱。但时至今日，许多日本企业仍仰仗先进的科技，让所在行业面对韩国和台湾的竞争仍能保持优势。
不过，尽管日本培养出的律师仍不多，但工程师数量也不比从前。在日本经济产业省去年进行的一次调查中，有三分之二的受访制造企业都表示，自己缺乏高技能技术工人，尽管日本劳动力市场历来疲软。
挪威资助了一项“科学教育的相关性研究”(ROSE)计划，以调查25个国家对待科学的态度。调查结果显示，与其它国家的中学生相比，日本中学生对“我愿意从事技术工作”这个选项的反应最为消极。
日立(Hitachi)总裁中西宏明(Hiroaki Nakanishi)担心，“学生们不想从事数学和科学行业。如今的大学毕业生已不具备他们工作所需的技能。”
技术专家的缺乏与人们对于失业更普遍的担忧相矛盾。按照国际水平衡量，日本仅4.9%的失业率很低。但全球经济危机爆发前日本失业率不到4%，盛田昭夫的年代更是不到3%。
此外，官方失业率也掩盖了企业对工人需求的真实状况。
在2009年全球经济危机最严重之时，日本经济产业省认为“潜在”失业人口占到劳动人口总数的近14%，即900万人。
该部门表示，由于“劳动力囤积”，大多数此类人群仍拥有工作——“劳动力囤积”是一个用来形容企业在经济低迷时期不愿裁人的术语。
根据严厉的日本劳动法，除了业绩最糟糕的公司，其它任何公司都不得“强制”裁员。大多数企业所能做的最佳选择，就是用提前退休来处理过剩员工。
日本企业将生产转向海外、以应对日元汇率飙升（已至15年高点）的能力因此受限。索尼等部分企业已关闭了日本国内的工厂，但其它一些企业承诺，即使自己已在中国、泰国或墨西哥建厂，也仍会保持国内的产能。
不是每个日本工人都从裁员限制中捞到了好处。目前，三分之一的劳动力签署的都是临时合同，收入较低，几乎得不到保障。那些不能轻易解雇年长员工的企业，招募年轻员工的数量少之又少。
截至去年12月，只有七成的应届毕业生找到了工作，为有史以来的最低水平，这表明官方失业率可能进一步升高。
年轻人不再认为制造业是一种可靠的职业。根据出版商Recruit进行的一项调查，目前最受学生欢迎的雇主都是国有或曾是国有的服务集团——包括一家旅行社、两家铁路公司以及邮局。丰田和索尼则分列第82和第77位。
因此，企业开始去日本以外寻找研究人员和产品开发者。经济产业省进行的另一项调查发现，三分之二的制造商计划在5年内将部分研发工作移至海外，而5年前，这样想的企业还不到一半。
电子材料生产商日东电工(Nitto Denko)开发了一种能产生移动3D影像的“摄影”聚合物。
这种聚合物的研究工作是由日东电工设在美国加州的一家实验室与亚利桑那大学(University of Arizona)联合完成的。
日东电工副首席技术官表利彦(Toshihiko Omote)表示，美国大学的高水准是公司在那里设立研究中心的原因之一。另一个原因则是美国人力制度的灵活性。
“在美国，你可以用短期合同为特定的项目招募到高水平的研究员。这在日本太难了。” |
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