Many unemployed Japanese youths have no intention of finding a job, according to a recent Cabinet Office report.
"Many high school dropouts and teenagers who refused to go to school remain in seclusion at home, are not making any effort to find jobs and don't show any inclination to enter society," the report says. "These youths are not included among official statistics on the unemployed."
The report says an estimated 278,000 young people in 2003 were without jobs after graduating from high schools, two-year junior colleges and four-year universities, accounting for 14.3 percent of the nation's total unemployed.
The percentage shot up from 5.1 percent in 1991, when 125,000 graduates did not have jobs, the office said in a report which it submitted to the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, a key policy-setting panel chaired by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
An estimated 530,000 people aged between 15 and 24 remained without work and were not interested in finding jobs, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.