Japan ‘Ice Age’ Returns as Student Joblessness Soars to Record

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aSj9Cvt0AZHg

Japan ‘Ice Age’ Returns as Student Joblessness Soars to Record
By Aki Ito and Toru Fujioka

excerpt:
March 12 (Bloomberg) -- A record proportion of Japan’s college students will be graduating this month without a job offer, a government survey showed.

Some 20 percent of March 2010 university graduates were yet to find work as of Feb. 1, according to a report released by the Education and Labor Ministries in Tokyo today. That’s the largest proportion since at least 2000, when comparable data was first made available.

The job market slump is particularly troublesome for young people in Japan, where most new hires for companies from Canon Inc. to Mitsubishi Electric Corp. are fresh out of school.
end of excerpt

Read the entire article at Bloomberg.com. 

April is the start of the school year and the spring-summer term

April is the start of the school year in Japan, for all levels of education. It is also the time when people start new jobs and move home. A basic rule of nature in regards to the school year: when the plum trees blossom in February-March, students are taking entrance exams and/or attending graduation ceremonies. When the cherry trees blossom, students are attending enrollment/matriculation ceremonies, and classes for the spring term commence.

In this photo we have the faint beginnings of the cherry blossoms outside the College of Education and Regional Studies, University of Fukui, Bunkyo Campus, Fukui Japan. March was cold and very rainy, but now that it has got warmer, we can expect a lot of blossoms on the cherry and dogwood trees.