Informal job offers have been accepted by 84.3% of job-seeking university students in Japan who plan to graduate in March, the labor and education ministries said Friday.
The share as of Dec. 1 dipped 1.7 percentage points from a year earlier, the first decrease in four years, as some students who received job offers from several companies apparently hesitated to pick one.
Among male students, the share of those who took job offers dropped to 83.3% from 85.0%, while the figure for female students declined to 85.5% from 87.2%.
For students majoring in humanities and social science, the share fell to 84.2% from 86.2%, while that of science majors dropped to 85.0% from 85.4%.
By region, Kanto, including Tokyo, saw the share inch up 0.6 point to 91.2%. Elsewhere in the country, the figure went down by 0.2 to 5.2 points.
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