S'engager dans l'emploi à vie dans une entreprise japonaise vs. changer d'emploi en cours de carrière
Si vous agissez
Rester dans la même entreprise toute sa vie
25%
Si vous n’agissez pas
Changer d'emploi en milieu de carrière
60%
Pourcentage de personnes qui regrettent ensuite chaque choix. Les barres et le registre complet s’affichent ci-dessous.
Carrière
Dernière révision 2026-05-13
Qualité des preuves 3.88/5
Score d’évaluation en huit dimensions selon la
grille de qualité
. Chaque dimension notée de 1 à 5.
D1 Vérification des sources
2/5
D2 Autorité et indépendance des sources
3/5
D3 Précision du taux de regret
2/5
D4 Comparabilité des sources
5/5
D5 Motif de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Qualité de la prose
4/5
D7 Complétude des réserves
5/5
D8 Qualité de l’échantillon
5/5
Moyenne3.88/5
Données de substitution — aucune enquête directe sur les regrets n'existe pour cette décision. Les taux sont dérivés des scores de satisfaction et des obstacles d'accès plutôt que de questions portant directement sur les regrets. Voir les mises en garde ci-dessous.
Regret d'action
Rester dans la même entreprise toute sa vie
25%
25 % des travailleurs japonais qui ont envisagé de changer d'emploi mais sont restés regrettent de ne pas avoir changé
Travailleurs japonais restés dans une seule entreprise tout au long de leur carrière
enquête rétrospective, mars 2023
Regret d'inaction
Changer d'emploi en milieu de carrière
60%
59,7 % des Japonais ayant récemment changé d'emploi disent avoir regretté ou eu le sentiment d'avoir échoué après avoir changé d'emploi
Travailleurs japonais ayant changé d'employeurs en milieu de carrière
enquête rétrospective, mars 2023
% regrettent ce choix
Rester dans la même entreprise toute sa vieChanger d'emploi en milieu de carrière
25%60%
inaction dominates — L'inaction domine — la plupart regrettent de ne pas avoir agi.
Décisions associées
Décisions sémantiquement similaires — même terrain, compromis différents.
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.
Sources : action
Registre des sources
Chaque chiffre ci-dessous correspond à ce que la source a rapporté, avec la citation textuelle sur laquelle nous nous sommes appuyés et la méthode de calcul. Cliquez sur un lien pour vérifier directement.
[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
Source de référence
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
Rapport gouvernemental
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
Extrait
“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.
”
Données source de
2022-03-31
Consulté le
2026-07-01
Calcul
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.)
Sources : inaction
Registre des sources
Chaque chiffre ci-dessous correspond à ce que la source a rapporté, avec la citation textuelle sur laquelle nous nous sommes appuyés et la méthode de calcul. Cliquez sur un lien pour vérifier directement.
[1]HRzine (reporting Shikigaku Co. survey) — 59.7% report regret or failure after changing jobs; 'salary lower than expected' most common reason — Shikigaku survey
Source de référence
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
Source de référence
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
Extrait
“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.
”
Données source de
2025-11-19
Consulté le
2026-07-01
Calcul
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.)
Réserves
Les deux taux de regret proviennent de deux enquêtes différentes avec des populations et des échantillons différents, si bien que les côtés ne sont pas strictement équivalents. Les 25 % du côté action sont le complément d'une enquête VALUE WORKS (n=301, oct. 2024) dans laquelle 75 % des travailleurs qui avaient envisagé de changer d'emploi sans le faire disaient ne pas regretter d'être restés — bien que la moitié de ce même groupe déclare reconsidérer encore un changement, si bien que l'« absence de regret » coexiste avec une insatisfaction persistante. Les 59,7 % du côté inaction proviennent d'une enquête Shikigaku (n=1 000, juin 2022) auprès de personnes ayant changé d'emploi au cours des trois années précédentes ; sa principale raison de regret était « salaire inférieur aux attentes », et les deux sources proches du recrutement peuvent comporter un biais de cadrage. Les chiffres japonais de regret de changement d'emploi varient largement d'une enquête à l'autre (d'autres sondages rapportent un regret d'environ un changeur d'emploi sur quatre), si bien que les 59,7 % se situent dans le haut de la fourchette et doivent être lus comme le résultat d'une seule enquête, non comme un taux établi. Une version antérieure de cette entrée attribuait les deux taux (45 %/26 %) à une enquête En Japan qui, selon la couverture de Nippon.com, mesurait en réalité l'effet des heures supplémentaires sur le choix de l'entreprise et ne rapportait aucune donnée de regret ; ces chiffres ont été remplacés. Le marché du travail japonais connaît un changement structurel : la part des travailleurs non réguliers est passée de 15 % en 1984 à environ 37 % en 2023, si bien que l'emploi à vie véritable — et le cadrage de cette entrée — s'applique à une fraction décroissante de la main-d'œuvre. Les sources du JILPT fournissent un contexte matériel mais n'apportent pas de taux de regret indépendants.
