Japanese restaurant chains such as Yakiniku King, Zensho (Sukiya) are now paying college graduates starting salaries over 300,000. Yudetaro is now at 350,000. The reason is the labor shortage- Before the raise Yudetaro was only able to hire 3 graduates vs 12 the previous year

This is happening everywhere. And at most of these companies, there are veteran employees earning those same 300-350k salaries who have been there for 20 years or more. They started at 250k or so and worked they way up, earning raises for good performance, only to see fresh graduates with no experience get paid even more just because the job market has never stopped fetishizing the untrained fresh grad while offering less and less marketability as you get beyond the typical first-job-change age.

The question is why these corporations don’t see the value in paying even 10-20% more to someone with two decades of experience compared to the new grad’s *zero*. Sixty years ago, the new grad’s blank-slate adaptability, combined with a stellar academic record, might have been worth paying the premium to get them on board at a young age, knowing they’d be working for you uninterrupted for the next 40-50 years. But who in Gen Z is going to stay with a company for life?

This is what feeds the resentment of the Ice Agers (aged mid 30s to mid 50s) who were too young for the bubble, never had a good job market (imagine a whole generation of how the US class of 2008-09 were treated), had to struggle all their lives, but looked forward to their middle-age years when Japan’s seniority system would finally benefit them. And just when they were at the gates, the system flipped 180° and said that youth and anti-seniority were worth more than half a lifetime of labor.

They pay new graduates these salaries, but generally staff currently employed are stuck at such crappy salaries….. it’s also not like they can leave and go to another company and get the new graduates these salaries salary, they’ll be offered the “already in the workforce generally accepted” wage.

Japan’s businesses are fundamentally broken.