However, beyond a hesitation to hire women as permanent employments, even more obstacles exist for women under this system. Considering that women make up nearly half of the Japanese workforce, this is an important issue. Employees are expected to work from morning to midnight, which is a problem for a mother looking to have a career at the same time. Yukako Kurose, a woman who experienced that firsthand, believes that the Japanese permanent employment system (and corporate culture in general) makes it impossible for women to start a family and have a career. The sheer amount of women that are unable to take part in permanent employment is a waste of potential that Japan can ill afford to waste. Japan has both a labor shortage and a declining birthrate and women having to choose between having a family or devoting their time to a company certainly does not help those situations.
In recent years there have been a surge of non-regular employees (part-timers, workers from temporary agencies; anyone not considered a full-time worker), suggesting that permanent employment could be on its way out. As Wiseman and Nishiwaki writes, non-regular employees account for a little more than one-third of the Japanese workforce, which, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, is an all-time high, up from 16% in 1985. This is seen as a better situation to employers, but as a result, a heavy burden is placed on the employees. Non-regular workers can be let go at any time, which gives companies much more flexibility when they cannot afford to pay all of their workers, but this puts a strain on the non-regulars who constantly fear for their job.
Job tenure in Japan overall is pretty long due to permanent employment, but in the end, sacrifices must be made to keep the system going and usually these sacrifices are made by the employees. By law, employers can reduce their workers’ hours but as a result the employers must pay at least 60 percent of their workers’ hourly wages during that time. And the Japanese government even supports measures like this as it is a part of the national budget. In 2009 alone, 60 billion yen was set aside to help repay companies for the payments they had to pay to workers for cutting their hours. For many workers, these changes pushed them to the decision to quit after being faced with humiliating wage/hour reductions, or demotions altogether. 
This can be seen in Fackler’s interview of Yukako Kurose. After Kurose became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl, she began to leave work before 6:30 every day so that she could pick up her from day care. However because of that, she was always overlooked when it came to give out promotions and eventually she was demoted to a clerical job where she had even less chances for advancement. Finally fed up with the way she was treated simply because she has a child, she quit her job. Although she was never part of the permanent employment system, there are many people that were in Kurose’s position, whether they are mothers like her, or just someone who was a victim of wage cuts. For them, it makes more sense to look for work elsewhere, rather than receiving reduced opportunities and benefits, which highlights a huge flaw of permanent employment.
