Reflecting on the Difficulties of the Lost Generation

: Insights from Interviews with 20 Individuals

Abstract

This paper elucidates the current state of research on the employment ice age generation, who graduated during the economic downturn from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, using an online interview survey conducted with 20 participants in 2023. The career difficulties faced by the ice age generation did not manifest merely as a continuous series of nonregular employment. Even among those who started working full time upon graduation, many began their careers in jobs with poor working conditions. There are also numerous cases in which individuals, despite having full-time work experience, left full-time positions multiple times, oscillated between full-time and non-regular employment, or experienced periods of unemployment. In this paper, we refer to such career trajectories as “yo-yo careers.”

Current support for the ice age generation primarily focuses on redistributive efforts aimed at securing full-time employment or employment in general. However, it is also necessary to engage in ongoing discussions on the social recognition of the existential experiences of those who struggle to find a place in society. Furthermore, there is a need to explore strategies to convey this issue as a continuous problem that extends to younger generations rather than merely as a generational issue unique to a particular era.