Abstract
After the collapse of bubble economy, construction market has been diminishing rapidly. Under construction downturns like this, companies came to utilize dependent contractors as cheap work force. Previous studies has pointed out that these dependent contractors tend to be hired at very low wages. However, to the author's best knowledge, there has been no precedent studies that investigated the quantitative analysis of dependent contractor getting wages below the public assistance standard. Therefore purpose of this study is to quantify percentage of dependent contractor getting wages below the public assistance standard. The study reveals following findings: (1) 42.4 % of dependent contractors get wages below the public assistance standard. (2) Those dependent contractors who work at wages below the public assistance standards tend to be elderly households and households with school children. (3) The ratio of those who work below the public assistance standards among dependent contractors is not lower than ordinary workers (except short-time workers), and in some occupational categories, sometimes higher.
