Comprometerse con el empleo de por vida en una empresa japonesa vs. cambiar de trabajo a mitad de carrera
Si actúas
Quedarse en una sola empresa de por vida
25%
Si no actúas
Cambiar de empleo a mitad de carrera
60%
Porcentaje de quienes luego se arrepienten de cada elección. Las barras y el registro completo aparecen abajo.
Carrera
Última revisión 2026-05-13
Calidad de la evidencia 3.88/5
Puntuación de revisión en ocho dimensiones según la
rúbrica de calidad
. Cada dimensión puntuada de 1 a 5.
D1 Verificación de fuentes
2/5
D2 Autoridad e independencia de las fuentes
3/5
D3 Precisión de la tasa de arrepentimiento
2/5
D4 Comparabilidad de las fuentes
5/5
D5 Patrón de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Calidad de la prosa
4/5
D7 Completitud de las advertencias
5/5
D8 Calidad de la muestra
5/5
Media3.88/5
Datos sustitutos — no existe ninguna encuesta directa sobre el arrepentimiento para esta decisión. Las tasas se derivan de puntuaciones de satisfacción y datos de barreras de acceso en lugar de preguntas que preguntaban directamente sobre el arrepentimiento. Ver advertencias más abajo.
Arrepentimiento por acción
Quedarse en una sola empresa de por vida
25%
El 25% de los trabajadores japoneses que consideró cambiar de empleo pero se quedó se arrepiente de no haber cambiado
Trabajadores japoneses que permanecieron en una empresa durante toda su carrera
encuesta retrospectiva, marzo 2023
Arrepentimiento por inacción
Cambiar de empleo a mitad de carrera
60%
El 59,7% de los japoneses que cambiaron de empleo recientemente dice que se arrepintió o sintió que fracasó tras cambiar de trabajo
Trabajadores japoneses que cambiaron de empleador a mitad de carrera
encuesta retrospectiva, marzo 2023
% que se arrepienten de esta elección
Quedarse en una sola empresa de por vidaCambiar de empleo a mitad de carrera
25%60%
inaction dominates — Domina la inacción — la mayoría se arrepiente de no actuar.
Decisiones relacionadas
Decisiones semánticamente similares — mismo terreno, distintos compromisos.
A Shikigaku survey of 1,000 Japanese employees who had changed jobs in the previous three
years found that 59.7% reported regret or a sense of failure after joining their new
employer — most often because the salary was lower than expected, or because the new
organisation’s culture did not fit. On the other side, a VALUE WORKS survey of 301 working
adults who had considered a job change but stayed found that only 25% regret not having
changed — the other 75% said they do not regret staying, although half of that group report
they are still reconsidering a move. Taken together, the surveys point to more regret from
changing jobs than from staying. The Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JILPT)
2022 analysis adds context but no direct regret rate: it finds mid-career job-changers report
higher work engagement and self-evaluated performance than long-time employees, and that holding
a professional qualification or licence correlates with better wages after a change — a plausible
driver of the minority who regret not having moved.
The pattern here is inaction-dominates — regret runs higher among those who took the action
(changed jobs) than among those who stayed, which is the modal configuration in Gilovich and
Medvec’s temporal regret model only in the short term; over long horizons their model expects
inaction regret to grow. The two figures are not strictly comparable: they come from different
surveys, different years, and different populations, and Japanese job-change-regret polls vary
widely (other surveys report closer to one-in-four job-changer regret, well below Shikigaku’s
59.7%). What is consistent is that a clear majority of stayers do not regret staying, while a
majority of recent changers express at least some regret — frequently driven by pay that fell
short of expectations rather than by a wholesale rejection of the move.
Both rates carry framing caveats: the surveys were run by recruiting-adjacent organisations,
and the stayer “no regret” figure sits uneasily beside the finding that half of those same
workers are still weighing a change. An earlier version of this entry attributed both rates to
a single En Japan survey; that survey, per Nippon.com coverage, actually measured how overtime
affects which company people pick when changing jobs and reported no regret data at all, so its
figures have been replaced with the two direct-regret surveys above. The framing also assumes
genuine access to lifetime employment, which is shrinking: Japan’s share of non-regular workers
rose from 15% in 1984 to roughly 37% in 2023, so for a growing fraction of the workforce the
choice this entry describes is no longer available.
Fuentes: acción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
[1]Mynavi Agent CANVAS (survey by VALUE WORKS) — 75% of those who considered a job change but did not change report no regret; half are reconsidering
Fuente de referencia
VALUE WORKS surveyed 301 Japanese working adults aged 20-60 who had considered a job change but did not change jobs (online via Lancers, 10-19 October 2024). To the question "Do you regret not having changed jobs?", 75% answered "I do not regret it"; the complementary 25% therefore regret having stayed. The 25% is used directly as the action-side regret rate (regret of staying rather than changing). This replaces a prior figure (45%) that had been misattributed to an En Japan overtime/company-choice survey which, per Nippon.com coverage (nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01676), measured only whether overtime affected company choice and reported no regret data. A material caveat: half (50%) of these stayers report they are still reconsidering a job change, so "no regret" coexists with ongoing dissatisfaction.
[2]Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JILPT) — JILPT Research Report No.215: Job Change, Skill Development, and Career Formation of Middle-Aged Workers
Informe gubernamental
Mid-career job-changers had higher average work engagement and self-evaluations than long-time employees, and holding a professional qualification or licence correlated with better wages after a job change
Extracto
“A comparative analysis between job changers and long-time employees shows that the former have a higher level of work engagement on average, higher self-evaluations of work performance, and a stronger tendency to have an "autonomous career perspective." Possession of a professional qualification or license was observed to have a statistically significant positive correlation or a trend toward a positive correlation with any of the results such as better wages, a higher job position, and the more effective use of skills and knowledge after job change.
”
Datos de la fuente de
2022-03-31
Accedido
2026-07-01
Cálculo
This JILPT report provides material context for the action-side regret rather than a direct wage figure: it does not quantify a lifetime-vs-changer wage gap. Its comparative analysis finds mid-career job-changers report higher work engagement and self-evaluated performance than long-time employees, and that holding a professional qualification or licence correlates with better wages, a higher position, and greater use of skills after a job change — a plausible driver of the minority (25%) who regret not having changed. This source does not provide a direct regret rate and is supplementary to the VALUE WORKS direct-regret survey above. (An earlier version cited a generic JILPT reports directory and asserted a "15-20% higher pay by age 45" premium that appears in no JILPT report; that unsupported statistic has been removed.)
Fuentes: inacción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
[1]HRzine (reporting Shikigaku Co. survey) — 59.7% report regret or failure after changing jobs; 'salary lower than expected' most common reason — Shikigaku survey
Fuente de referencia
59.7% of recent job-changers said they had felt regret or that they had failed after joining their new employer, most often because salary was lower than expected
Shikigaku Co. surveyed 1,000 Japanese company employees aged 22-59 who had changed jobs within the previous 3 years (online questionnaire, 28-30 June 2022). 59.7% reported they had experienced regret or felt they had failed after joining their new employer; the most common reasons were "salary was lower than expected" (34.7%) and "organizational culture did not fit" (22.8%). The 59.7% is used directly as the inaction-side regret rate (regret of having changed jobs). This replaces a prior 26% figure that had been misattributed to an En Japan overtime/company-choice survey carrying no regret data (per Nippon.com coverage, nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01676).
[2]Nippon.com (reporting Japan MHLW 'Survey on recent graduates changing jobs') — A Third of Japan's University Grads Leave Their First Job Within Three Years
Fuente de referencia
33.8% of Japanese university graduates and 37.9% of high school graduates who started work in 2022 left their first job within three years, per the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
Extracto
“33.8% of those who graduated from university in March 2022 had left their first job within three years. [...] 37.9% among high school graduates. [...] Due in the part to the increase in job openings in 2021 that followed a drop at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate for recent graduates changing jobs announced in 2024 for 2021 graduates reached a 16-year high.
”
Datos de la fuente de
2025-11-19
Accedido
2026-07-01
Cálculo
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare "Survey on recent graduates changing jobs" (reported by Nippon.com) finds that roughly a third of the 2022 graduate cohort left their first employer within three years — 33.8% of university graduates and 37.9% of high school graduates — with turnover concentrated in smaller firms and in sectors such as accommodation and food service (55.4% for university graduates). This documents the underlying scale of mid-career/early-career job mobility in Japan that the changing side of this decision draws on. It does not provide a direct regret rate and is supplementary to the Shikigaku direct-regret survey above. (This replaces a prior source — a non-existent "JILPT Report on Youth Employment and Job Mobility in Japan 2022" citing a generic 403 directory URL and unverifiable 19%/8% one-year figures — with a real, government-sourced job-separation statistic.)
Advertencias
Las dos tasas de arrepentimiento provienen de dos encuestas distintas con poblaciones y muestras distintas, por lo que los lados no son estrictamente equivalentes. El 25% del lado de la acción es el complemento de una encuesta de VALUE WORKS (n=301, oct. 2024) en la que el 75% de los trabajadores que consideraron cambiar de empleo pero no lo hicieron dijo que no se arrepiente de haberse quedado — aunque la mitad de ese mismo grupo declara que sigue reconsiderando un cambio, de modo que la «ausencia de arrepentimiento» coexiste con una insatisfacción continua. El 59,7% del lado de la inacción proviene de una encuesta de Shikigaku (n=1.000, junio 2022) a personas que cambiaron de empleo en los tres años anteriores; su principal motivo de arrepentimiento fue «un salario más bajo de lo esperado», y ambas fuentes, vinculadas al ámbito del reclutamiento, pueden conllevar un sesgo de enfoque. Las cifras japonesas de arrepentimiento por cambio de empleo varían ampliamente entre encuestas (otros sondeos reportan un arrepentimiento de aproximadamente uno de cada cuatro), por lo que el 59,7% está en el extremo alto y debe leerse como el hallazgo de una encuesta, no como una tasa consolidada. Una versión anterior de esta entrada atribuía ambas tasas (45%/26%) a una encuesta de En Japan que, según la cobertura de Nippon.com, en realidad medía cómo las horas extra afectan a la elección de empresa y no reportaba dato alguno de arrepentimiento; esas cifras han sido reemplazadas. El mercado laboral japonés atraviesa un cambio estructural: la proporción de trabajadores no regulares creció del 15% en 1984 a aproximadamente el 37% en 2023, de modo que el empleo genuinamente de por vida — y el enfoque de esta entrada — se aplica a una fracción cada vez menor de la fuerza laboral. Las fuentes de JILPT proporcionan contexto sustancial pero no aportan tasas de arrepentimiento independientes.
