I have no direct experience with the situation in Japan, so take with a grain of salt: my understanding was that, as with much of Asia, the issue is not so much layoffs as burnout and the difficulty of getting one's foot in the door. "Low unemployment" where a significant portion of the youth population is working one or two arubaito or has landed a plum corporate gig that requires 12 hours in the office a day. I don't know how much I'd trust casual conversation about the situation, since it's not kosher to complain so forwardly.