"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today.<p>A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training.<p>(Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unemployment rate, i'm talking about labor non-participation rate as a measure of people who could be enticed into the workforce with a living wage)
Even tho you added an edit. You’re still wrong. Garbage collection is typically a high paying job because no one wants to do it. But people still consider it “below” them and don’t want to do it even when there’s a high unemployment rate.
18% is one of the.lowest rates on the planet. 4th in fact.<p>This includes early retirees, full time students, home makers and people unable to work for health related reasons.
In case you think 18% is Japan's unemployment rate: it's not. Japan's unemployment rate is 2.5%.<p><a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?locations=JP" rel="nofollow">https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?location...</a><p>This is basically the best in the world.<p><a href="https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/statistical-releases/2026/02/unemployment-rates-updated-february-2026.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/statistical-releases/2...</a><p>Not sure what rate OP is citing, but it's not the one I'd use to draw OP's conclusion. You don't wanna YOLO understanding how employment rates are calculated.
> You don't wanna YOLO understanding how employment rates are calculated.<p>You're way better off YOLO'ing <i>reading the documentation</i> about how they are calculated than listening to the myriad pundits deliberately trying to mislead people and drive conspiracy theories.<p>This is all documented on the websites of the various statistical agencies, and you can just <i>read their docs</i>.
Correct. I was using labor participation rates. As a society gets depressed and has a hard time people stop trying (ie they no longer count as unemployed, which doesnt count the people who are no longer trying to get a job).<p>Similar to how as police systems fail, people stop reporting things assuming nothing meaningful will happen anyways. And then there's less reports of crime, so magically "crime is down" -- high fives to the police system... (/s)
No one wants to clean s#it, especially in a country with as broad a social welfare net as Japan.<p>Instead, in Japan you can get someone from Vietnam, China, or Thailand to do that for a couple dollars a day with Gulf style guestworker rules.<p>Additionally, Asian societies don't have the same Luddite aversion to automation [0] that seems to have taken over Western mindshare as can be seen on HN.<p>They don't want Westerners nor are they opposed to Dirgiste style industrial policies that help build a public-private social safety net by commercializing and deploying automation.<p>Who do you think SoftBank and MUFG's largest LP's are lol.<p>Edit: can't reply<p>> I'd highly recommend watching Perfect Day by Wim Wenders. It's a really sweet film<p>It is! But for every Hirayama there are dozens of ASEAN and Chinese migrant workers doing menial work as part of the JETRO Trainee guest worker program.<p>> NYC sanitation dept...<p>Sanitation Engineers <i>aren't</i> janitors.<p>Janitors, fish cleaners, farmworkers, bricklayers, service staff, and other low and unskilled work is what is being supplemented by foreign workers and depending on the job by automation.<p>[0] - <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-around-the-world-view-ai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-aro...</a>
Japan is very different than most cultures in cleaning after yourself. It's very ingrained in their psyche, e.g. school students are trained to clean their classrooms in organized way.<p>So your argument might hold for other countries, but not for Japan. Cleaning is a pretty honorable thing to do there (and it's super-clean as people trash way less).
I'd highly recommend watching Perfect Day by Wim Wenders. It's a really sweet film.<p>"Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo, lives his life in simplicity and daily tranquility. Some encounters also lead him to reflect on himself."
-- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27503384/" rel="nofollow">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27503384/</a>
Unlike many other developed countries, foreign employees working in cleaning and maintenance are still a minority. This is gradually changing, but I believe the main issue is that young people are completely uninterested in this kind of work. Most people working in these industries in Japan are old rather than foreign. The average is probably over 50+, and there are quite a few people working past retirement.
There's a subreddit for the NYC sanitation dept because it's so competitive to get into.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DSNY/comments/1rwayil/what_was_the_salary_you_walked_away_from_when_you/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/DSNY/comments/1rwayil/what_was_the_...</a><p>People will clean garbage and shit for a DB pension, stability, not sitting at a desk, and avoiding corporate politics.<p>All of these things are easier to give to sanitation workers because human waste is a recession-proof good and it's less affected by boom-bust. Many people want these jobs.<p>If you're a tech worker that likes a clean office and new technology this is boring.<p>But I'm sure there's a sanitation worker going on a similar rant about how terrible the tech industry is.
I clean shit for free often.<p>I wouldn't like doing it past the point of exhaustion for low wages and with poor treatment though.
You’re allowed to type shit. We’re all adults here.
1. There is only so much you can pay the people doing the kind of work like cleaning the Shinkansens or manning the 7-11's because it affects customer costs. i.e. There's a point where you increase the salary of 7-11 workers that it causes a $2 fried chicken snack to inflate to $10 that customers will refuse to buy<p>2. Even if there was magically enough money and time to retrain people, they would still be short of workers.
Out of curiosity, what percentage of a fried chicken snack's final cost do you think is labor from that 7-11 worker?
Different from the USA, 7-11 in Japan and China are mainly self checkout at least, so they can technically run a store with less people since they don’t have to man cash registers to get people checked out.
I don't know about China, but I live in Japan and most konbini I have visited still have real human cashiers.
But who's going to unlock the expensive items from the plexiglass case?
This. Also there is a social backlash against Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai service workers in Japan now (the people who tend to be working the counter at a kombini, but apparently Asians all look the same to Western HNers), as well as Western tourists.<p>Edit: can't reply<p>> I doubt many Chinese youths want to work for minimum wage in Japan<p>Chinese are the 2nd largest nationality of foreign agricultural and food workers in Japan [0].<p>As long as the median household income in China [1] remains below the minimum wage in Japan [2], members of the bottom half of Chinese society will continue to emigrate there, Korea, and other countries to work, that said not at the same rate as was seen a decade ago.<p>[0] - <a href="https://catalog.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/opac_download_md/4738336/18_p025.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://catalog.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/opac_download_md/4738336/...</a><p>[1] - <a href="https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202507/t20250730_1960541.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202507/t202507...</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%80%E4%BD%8E%E8%B3%83%E9%87%91_(%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC)" rel="nofollow">https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%80%E4%BD%8E%E8%B3%83%E9...</a>
This is a linkage in theory but in practice it's an indirect linkage and the 7-11 owner does not have a handbook dictating how prices rise or fall relating to labour costs.<p>As evidenced by the non arrival of across the board 10% rises in meal costs when tipping is banned.<p>TL;DR cost and price linkage is not amenable to simplistic claims about the impact on pricing.
I wonder how the hikikomori problem in Japan will be aggravated by this. The situation was already dire in the 2000s. [0] The parents of the early generations of neets are aging and dying, not to mention that they must be growing quite old. Now robots will come. Perhaps this will serve as a warning for a new welfare system in Japan.<p>[0] Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (2007)
I went to a chain Family Restaurant recently here in Japan. The food is brought by a robot for a while now. Recently you get your seat selected at a touchscreen. You can pay at your table's tablet using PayPay. There is still some waiter staff, but it being reduced to the past. The only part that did not change much yet is the kitchen.<p>I said to myself to stop going, if there is no human staff left. On the other hand, small shops with good atmosphere are thriving.
The job no one wants?<p>Grunting out 2.6 babies before you’re 35.<p>Who’s paying for your nursing home?
Tax the robot’s income?
Will your demographic replacements vote for that?
<p><pre><code> > Grunting out 2.6 babies before you’re 35.
</code></pre>
* destroying your body, stripping your bones, getting diabetes and temporarily (or permanently) disabling yourself with issues no healthcare provider will take seriously for decades to come for 2.6 babies in your youth.
> Who’s paying for your nursing home<p>Japanese financial institutions <i>massive</i> capital positions across Asia, the US, and Europe which tend to be public-private ventures.<p>> Tax the robot’s income<p>Pretty much, in the sense that corporations and the Japanese government have spent decades working together to build a sovereign wealth model comparable to Singapore and the UAE's.
This is something that really needs to be done in the states imo.<p>IIRC we don't have a sovereign wealth fund, but we should in order to provide a social safety net for our citizens, especially with all the uncertainties regarding the future right now.
Japan is in a demographic decline. They need all the robots they can get.
Meanwhile in the US they're replacing artists, writers, and teachers
I agree with the teachers one. Having one lady in charge of educational instruction for that many kids will be looked back upon as barbarism.
Jobs everyone thinks are easy and nobody likes the people who do it.
If Universal Basic Income was a thing, this would probably happen much faster globally
How so? Why would I work harder, If it's all going to pay for someone to sit and do nothing?<p>After entire generations are subsidized by ubi, the system will collapse on itself.<p>In the US, native tribes get ubi when they turn 18. The end result isn't happiness or prosperity.
Japan's welfare system is extremely expansive as Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees a minimum standard of living through livelihood, housing, education, and medical assistance.<p>Additonally, Japan has spent decades thinking about this eventuality (at least since the 1970s), which is why Japan worked on the "Flying Geese" paradigm where Japanese public-private ventures would end up become major capital stake holders across Asia, the US, and Europe.
It’s amazing to use technology to save humans from toil. The question is, who owns the robot? Who benefits from the labor it produces?<p>The techno utopia we imagine is a world where nobody has to work. All our needs are taken care of and we live a life of leisure. But as long as there is ownership of the automated systems, those owners will hoard all the wealth generated by that automation.<p>Labor expenditures and taxes are the only times the wealthy have to share their wealth with the rest of us. If they succeed in disintermediating labor, and governments fail to tax them, the oligarchs will live a life of unlimited luxury while the rest of us die in poverty.
just like nobody in the US is qualified to work in tech so companies have to outsource jobs?
The article seems to say that it's not jobs nobody wants, but rather a labor shortage from an aging population. Japan just seems to be running out of people for its labor market.
They're coming for the jobs immigrants would be taking if the Japanese government weren't so xenophobic.
This is explicitly part of the discourse, but I think it means robotics companies continuing to receive government grants while not actually delivering any labor saving technology, and immigration policy being held back. The industries needing labor will not get a suitable solution, the economy will continue to suffer, but the psychology of those around the world who believe in racial order, and correct positions of alleles on geography, will remain soothed.
Why does Japan need immigrants? Japan is one of the safest countries in the world because of its immigration policies.
Robot war will be cinematic, will probably safe lives
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