Effects of economic environmental changes on job demands and workaholism in Japan

This paper examines how changes in macroeconomy environment and employment situation affected the workaholism trend among Japanese workers. Results of the analysis indicated that the driven component of workaholism remained high from the beginning of the 1990s when the bubble economy collapsed and throughout the 1990s. However, the enjoyment of work component has decreased for this period, causing the workaholic tendencies to be more serious in the worsening economic and employment circumstances. Moreover, the level of work overload actually increased for engineers and workers in their 30s and 40s in the middle of the economic depression. Based on these results, economic changes vs job demand interaction mechanism was presented and needed employee‐support policy directions were presented.