Day 156 of writing every day.
When you leave a full-time job in Japan, your employer is obligated to file paperwork regarding your termination from their organization. This means a form stating the income you earned for the duration of the fiscal year, a notice regarding your job termination, and an unemployment declaration form.
The income statement is for tax filing purposes, the notice is for applying for national health insurance, and the unemployment declaration form is for applying for unemployment benefits.
Unlike the income statement and unemployment declaration form, the notice about job termination is optional but most everyone follows the practice or has to deal with city hall employees contacting them to confirm someone applying for health insurance as a result of job loss is no longer employed there.
The above was what happened in my case when I went to city hall on Friday afternoon the day I left my job. My former employer couldn’t just provide a form for me in Osaka, but needed HR to mail it to me from Tokyo. I wasn’t expecting the income statement to come right away and it wouldn’t for close to another year before I’d need to use it for filing taxes. It was strange though, that it took a whole month for them to give me my unemployment declaration form. I get the impression that an outsourced HR is a terrible practice that’s only going to make things worse for employees over time.
I went to Hello Work a little late in terms of signing up as a job seeker and qualifying for benefits that would only apply basically after I find a job. The way the system works is if you leave your job of your own volition, you don’t see any unemployment insurance money for a couple months. During this whole period, you’re expected to provide for yourself despite being jobless, which I think can be very hostile to people who were barely making ends meet and left their jobs because they couldn’t take it anymore either.
Unemployment benefits are basically for those who lost their jobs but don’t have a job lined up for them. But more importantly, it’s also people who are unlikely to find gainful employment that better matches them. There’s no point finding a job that you can’t hold as a result of the tasks and or people being mentally too stressful for you.
I might write more about this when I attend the mandatory information session for all unemployment benefits applicants at the end of May.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 