From Japan's "Employment Ice Age" to Hong Kong's "Lying Flat" Era: A Warning Across Three Decades

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Is it possible for a society to complain about having too many university graduates while simultaneously worrying about a plummeting birth rate?

It sounds like a paradox, but this is precisely the path Japan has walked for the past thirty years. In 2021, a bizarre piece of news emerged: a large number of Japanese employees were fired for maliciously hiding their university degrees to pose as high school graduates for jobs. Behind this incredible phenomenon lies the tragedy of a generation—they were once the "chosen ones" who studied diligently for years, only to find they had to shed, or even hide, their "scholar's gown" of knowledge to secure even a menial job.

This painful experience from Japan is not just a historical account; it's a mirror reflecting the many challenges facing Hong Kong today. As we discuss "involution," "lying flat," record-low birth rates, and a youth brain drain, Japan's "lost thirty years" offer a profound and complete cautionary tale.

The Transfer of Crisis: A Meticulously Planned Social Siege

Japan's story begins with the bursting of its bubble economy in the 1990s. To survive, corporations first cut overtime pay, then slashed jobs on a massive scale. An "Employment Ice Age" that would last for over a decade had begun.

Faced with a grim job market, society, the government, and individuals all found a common "safe harbor"—the university.

The Government's "Shift of Burden"

The Japanese government was happy to see young people flood into universities. This could temporarily mask youth unemployment rates and defer social risk. Consequently, the government relaxed the approval process for new universities. In just over a decade, the number of universities surged from around 500 to over 700, with private institutions making up the bulk of this expansion. Can't find a job after graduation? No problem. The government then launched a "Graduate School Double-Up Plan," encouraging students to pursue further studies. All of this seemed to be for the benefit of the youth, but in reality, it was a perfect transfer of the employment crisis onto the education system.

The Universities' "Business Model"

Driven by policy incentives and soaring demand, higher education became a lucrative business. Private universities expanded recklessly. They knew that opening science and engineering programs, which require expensive and sophisticated laboratories, was far less profitable than offering humanities and social science majors. As a result, a flood of liberal arts programs emerged. Using an "over-enrollment" strategy, they aggressively recruited students while their faculty numbers and teaching facilities remained stagnant, reaping huge profits from the tuition fees and futures of an entire generation. From 1975 to the post-2000 era, public university tuition rose more than tenfold, with private university fees skyrocketing even higher.

Under the lingering influence of the "lifetime employment" system, students and parents still clung to the belief that "just getting into any university is enough." Whether the major was relevant or the teaching quality was poor became secondary. A university diploma became the last straw of hope in a desperate era.

The Individual's "Blind Faith"

This interconnected chain of crisis transfer ultimately led to disastrous consequences: a severe mismatch between the number of graduates and available jobs, and the rapid devaluation of academic degrees. On one hand, masses of liberal arts graduates faced unemployment upon graduation; on the other, companies struggled with a "labor shortage," unable to find the IT talent they needed.

Hong Kong's Echo: Are We Walking a Similar Path?

Turning our gaze to Hong Kong today, we can easily sense a similar anxiety in the air.

The Resonance of Degree Devaluation

Once upon a time, a university degree in Hong Kong was a golden ticket to the middle class. Today, with the universalization of higher education, the social status and financial returns of a bachelor's degree are a shadow of what they once were. Young people invest immense time and money, only to graduate and find that wage growth lags far behind soaring property prices and the cost of living. This sense of disillusionment, where the "return on investment" is disproportionately low, is strikingly similar to Japan's "degree devaluation."

Structural Dilemmas in the Job Market

Japan's tragedy was that the talent cultivated by universities was completely misaligned with market demand. Hong Kong's industrial structure is relatively narrow, with finance and real estate absorbing a large portion of talent. But can these sectors satisfy the employment needs of tens of thousands of graduates from diverse fields each year? When the "slasher" lifestyle and the gig economy shift from being a choice of freedom to a compromise forced upon young people due to a lack of stable, well-paying jobs, it echoes the rise of Japan's "non-regular employment" system, which was born out of a corporate desire to cut costs.

The Social Mentality from "Working Poor" to "Lying Flat"

Japan's "Ice Age Generation" went through a progression from being the "working poor" to "freeloading off parents" (ken-rō), and eventually to "lying flat," choosing not to marry or have children. They weren't lazy; they were beaten down by reality time and again, losing faith in corporations and society until they lost even the energy to be angry, left only with a sense of helplessness. In Hong Kong, the high cost of living and a seemingly rigid social hierarchy are fostering a similar "lying flat" mentality among the youth. The rewards for hard work are diminishing, and hopes for upward mobility are fading. A growing number of young people are choosing to lower their aspirations, seeking only a stable, uneventful life. The recent wave of emigration is an even more drastic manifestation of this societal sense of powerlessness.

A Sacrificed Generation, An Overdrawn Future

To solve its immediate problems, the Japanese government tolerated the expansion of "non-regular employment." Initially intended to absorb supplementary labor like housewives and the elderly, it completely transformed corporate hiring practices. By 2022, the number of non-regular workers in Japan had reached 21 million, accounting for nearly 37% of the workforce. They earned meager wages, lacked basic benefits, and, most importantly, had almost no path for advancement. Once they missed the "new graduate" window, it was as if they were permanently locked out of the stable employment system.

The consequences of this reform were catastrophic. Data revealed that the unmarried rate for men in non-regular employment was as high as 60-79%, far exceeding that of regular employees. This generation, abandoned by society, "retaliated" in the most decisive way possible: they chose not to marry and not to have children.

Japan did not get its third baby boom. Instead, it got the "8050 Crisis" (80-year-old parents caring for their 50-year-old stay-at-home children), which has now evolved into a "9060 Crisis." All of modern Japan's struggles with a declining birthrate, an aging population, and low-desire society were seeded three decades ago.

The warning for Hong Kong is this: the struggles of the youth are the struggles of the entire society.

Hong Kong currently has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. When we attribute this to young people being "irresponsible" or making a "personal choice," shouldn't we also reflect on whether there are structural factors at play, similar to those in Japan? When a young person finds it a luxury just to live and work in peace, how can we expect them to take on the heavy responsibility of raising the next generation?

Conclusion: No One Can Fight the Tide Alone

The story of Japan's "Employment Ice Age" generation teaches us that in the face of a massive structural crisis, individual effort often pales in comparison. They were not lazy; they were just unlucky to be standing at the crossroads of a broken system.

Short-sighted government policies, the commercialization of education, and corporate greed wove a net that trapped an entire generation. If the Japanese government back then had confronted the problem head-on, restricted the disorderly expansion of universities, and built a new employment safety net instead of simply "transferring the crisis," the outcome might have been vastly different.

History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Japan's lesson is a weighty textbook, reminding Hong Kong today that to ignore the plight of the youth is to overdraw the city's future. As societal elites and policymakers discuss macroeconomic strategies and future plans, perhaps the most crucial thing they can do is to genuinely listen to and understand the struggles and helplessness of this generation. Because their choices will ultimately define the city's tomorrow.