On Dec 9, 4:08 pm, trap_for_junk_m...@yahoo.com (Louise Bremner)
wrote:
> Hence the rising numbers of freeters? (Are there any stats on those? Or
> is it all vague arm-waving?)

As with all social trend watching in Japan, I've always suspected that
this one was the invention of some guy who overhead conversation among
three high-school girls while standing in line at the McDonalds on the
west side of Ikebukuro station. Then he went on a talk show.

But five minutes poking around with Google did provide some statistics
of a sort. You'd have to dig further to separate the wheat from the
chaff, though. For instance here:

http://www.miraikan.go.jp/english/statistics/001/12.html

the numerical data suggests a significant rise in non-full-time
employees, but it's not broken down by age and the graphs actually
show the reverse of the numbers, so you'd want to go find the original
data.

This looks better:

http://www.jil.go.jp/english/laborinfo/library/documents/2004_2005jwlp.pdf

Check out pages 40 and 41.