This paper examines the recruiting methods for young non-regular workers by stores in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, and the interrelationship between recruiting strategy and employment seeking behavior. The study area is the Nagoya metropolitan area.
Paid employment information media such as employment magazines, classified advertisement sites on the Internet and recruiting leaflets in newspapers tend to be used in downtown areas. On the other hand, the media mostly used in suburban stores are store window recruiting advertisements. These stores actively use this method to save the cost and bother of recruiting young non-regular workers.
One of the reasons for the popularity of store window recruiting advertisements in suburban stores in general relates to the growth and development of roadside stores. Roadside stores have grown with low cost management and systematization, and provide essential goods and services for suburban residents at reasonable prices, which is the reason that the stores need cheap unskilled labor. Therefore, the best method for recruiting cheap labor is store window recruiting advertisements.
The stores systematized as chain stores after 1980 accumulated on suburban roadsides and each introduced a standardized style of building along with their corporate identity. The movement towards standardization was extended to the recruiting methods for part-time labor. Furthermore, standardized labor recruiting using store window advertisements in suburban roadside stores became more popular because of the need for cheap labor. Thus, standardized labor recruiting using store window advertisements became widespread as the number of suburban chain roadside stores increased.
Store window recruiting advertisements are now the most important factor and information source for young people to obtain non-regular work. Young people living in suburban areas apply for part-time positions by seeing the store window recruiting advertisements as they use the neighboring store on a daily basis. Employment in the neighboring stores for young people results from the interaction between employers who need to save the cost and bother of recruiting and young people's life styles. The interaction consequently involves attracting young applicants who live in those neighborhoods.
In this process, employers benefit from the fact that they are able to save the cost and bother of recruiting since young people are fitted into the employers' strategy through their daily consumption behavior.
Little speculation has taken place concerning interrelationships between work activity and consumption behavior in studies about metropolitan areas. However, there are close interrelationships between the work activity and the consumption behavior of young people who reside in the suburbs. It is assumed that the interrelationship is becoming more significant amid ongoing denormalization of labor.
