Accountants and lawyers can earn a lot. No,
they could earn a lot in the past.
In Japan, those highly professional jobs
are no more tickets for a decent life.
They were known for well-paid jobs and popular
among students in prestigious colleges in Japan. However, situations in
accountants and lawyers are going pretty worse nowadays.
I found a thread in a popular online forum
called “2 channel” in which those who quit a big accounting firm in Japan and
are finding another job wrote their screams.
Here are some screams from them:
- I entered a small-medium sized accounting
firm, but the working environments are terrible.
- You have to be careful when you enter a
small and medium sized accounting firm. You will have to clean offices every
morning, and you will have to come to the office 30 minutes earlier in order to
clean the office. In addition, you cannot get paid for it. This is impossible
for big audit/accounting firms.
- Even if you can enter a big audit firm,
it is said that only one in ten people can be a partner under this economy. How
can rest of the people live in the future?
- You can just earn just around 300 million
Yen (39000 USD as of today).
- I was already a loser when I started to
aim at being a certified accountant. I should have just been a local government
employee without wasting a lot of time on studying so hard to be a certified
accountant.
- According to a book published last year
titled “Super Gap Society-Lawyer’s Industry”, the gap of the salary between lawyers
is pretty widening compared with that in three years ago. Those who belong to a
lower bracket only earn less than 100 million Yen (13000 USD). Law school
generation (which means recent lawyers under a recent system in Japan) is
called “3.5 million Yen (45000 USD) generation”. It is said that a large group
of lawyers earn less than 300,000 Yen (3900 USD) per month. If you can enter a
large accounting firm, you will be actually asked to leave the company at the
age of 38. It is said that if you cannot be an elite winning a harsh
competition to climb the ladder, you will be kicked out of the company at the
age of late 30s or early 40s. The average suicide rate for lawyers in 2009 is
3.1 people out of 10,000 people, which is higher than that of whole Japanese (2.58
people out of 10,000). The concern for the future of lawyer’s industry which is
dwindling and a lot of stress make lawyers suffered.
- To get a license will not guarantee our
job any more. You will have to create jobs by yourself or you will have to do
more sales activity instead of just waiting for office works laying back at
your desk.
- There really are too many accountants in
job market.
(Unquote)
One of the biggest reasons why even
certified accountants and lawyers came to be unable to earn a decent amount of
money is that Japan government started to take the policy to increase certified
accountants and lawyers, and Japan government started to establish a higher
course of law (like Master’s Degree ) in colleges and forced people to enter
the course. As for accountants, Japan government simply increased the number of
accountants loosing the exams.
The policy gave passionate youngsters a lot
of hopes and terrible reality as a result. I guess that Japan government actually
knew this result, but they didn’t want to increase unemployment rate and wanted
to run more cash pushing those passionate and pure young people into higher
academic courses.
