It’s not often that I find something interesting on MSN but once in a while when I use a computer that still has their home page set to that I see something that catches my eye.
This article was linked on MSN Japan. It’s title is “Jobless guys can’t get married!?”. I’m not exactly sure what the point is because for some reason, at least to me, this article seems very Japanese and not the kind of research an American would think of but anyway,
If I read it correctly they polled 1000 people per type of job and asked if they were married or divorced. The answers were:
| Job Type | married | divorced |
| professional skilled labor (male) | 50% | 55% |
| professional skilled labor (female) | 20% | 12% |
| management (male) | 49% | 17% |
| management (female) | 61% | 32% |
| office worker(male) | 19% | 11% |
| office worker(female) | 15% | 10% |
| salesperson (male) | 15% | 10% |
| salesperson (female) | 12% | 21% |
| service (male) | 27% | 30% |
| service (female) | 17% | 32% |
| security (male) | 17% | 09% |
| security (female) | 24% | 24% |
| fishing / farming (male) | 17% | 12% |
| fishing / farming (female) | 09% | 05% |
| communications (male) | 24% | 22% |
| communications (female) | 20% | 60% |
| production/construction/manual labor (male) | 08% | 08% |
| production/construction/manual labor (female) | 07% | 09% |
| jobless (male) | 04% | 34% |
| jobless (female) | 17% | 17% |
Note that I guessed at those numbers by looking at the graph.
I’m not sure how you are supposed to draw any conclusions from that since it’s not clear to me how it was questioned. If you take just the first line it’s more than 100%. Does that mean that 50% of the people said they were married at one point or another and of those 55% said they were now divorced? I have no idea.
But, the article tries to point out some interesting things.
*) Management has the best chance for a successful marriage where as manual laborer has the least chance.
*) There’s a huge difference between professional Japanese men and woman and their marriage and divorce rates
*) There’s a huge difference bewteen jobless men and jobless women with jobless men coming out far on the bottom.
It’s an outrage I tell you…..an outrage.
Maybe 5% got remarried or something after their divorce. you know, 55% divorce, 45% staymarried, another 5% get married after their divorce, and thre you have 55 and 50.
Just curious about this:
Do they have unemployment benefits in Japan? How long does it last?
These stats don’t make any sense! Can’t figure out how they structured the study.
Very interesting. I once had a Japanese guy tell me that, although he’d like to, he couldn’t ask me out because he had just lost his job. Lame excuse, I thought, and yet, a couple months later, he called to say he had just gotten a new job, and was I available that weekend?
well, as someone that was jobless in Japan for the last 7 months I know what it’s like to feel like you can’t ask someone out. It’s very hard to go out in Tokyo without spending $50 to $100.
Just taking the train somewhere interesting can end up being $15 for the day + lunch ($8 – $15) and dinner ($20 to $40). A movie is $15.
I don’t know about unemployment benefits in Japan
アメリカには”お見合い結婚”という習慣はないらしい。しかし日本には”お見合い結婚”と言う文化がある。まぁーお見合い結婚を一言で言うならば、他力本願というところかな