Why Do Governments Employ Irregular Workers? Evidence from Japan

Abstract

  After 2000s, the number of “irregular” local public workers have increased in Japan. Although they were working in the public sector, which is expected to play a role to reduce poverty, their wages and working condition were sometimes said to be bad, and their employment condition was criticized as “working poor in the governments.” While the improvement of working condition has been tried and the new system of employment was started in FY2020, it is unknown why local governments need to employ the irregular workers, which were criticized and had rarely employed before 1990s. Thus, this paper investigates the factors increasing irregular local public workers in Japan by the empirical analysis using the panel data. As a result, this paper shows that the employment of irregular local public workers is increased by the increasing demand of public services, increasing salary of regular workers, and decreasing the minimum wage level, while the analysis does not show the clear relationship between the fiscal conditions and the employment of irregular local public workers. This result is different from the extant research about irregular workers in private company showing that the employment of irregular workers depends on the financial condition of the company.