著者

藤原 千沙

出版者

法政大学経済学部学会

雑誌

経済志林 = The Hosei University Economic Review (ISSN:00229741)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.89, no.3, pp.195-224, 2022-03-25

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The aim of this paper is to examine the issue of holding multiple jobs. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Government has changed Japanese labor policy from prohibiting employed workers from holding secondary jobs to allowing them to do so in principle. The reason for the policy shift was explained to be to promote flexible work arrangements. However, according to Nobuko Hara’s work on welfare reform since the 1980s, work flexibility leads to low working hours, with insufficient and unstable income, and makes it difficult for single mothers to live and care for their children. In this paper, I review a general study of multiple job holders along with the work of single mothers and their childcare. I then examine the survey data collected by the Single Mother Research Project. The data from July 2020 to July 2021 suggest that some single mothers are holding secondary jobs because one job alone fails to provide enough income to rear children. It is also suggested that through holding secondary jobs, single mothers are protecting themselves from the risks of leave of absence due to COVID-19, reduced working hours, and unemployment. Holding multiple jobs for single mothers, however, has a negative impact on childcare due to time input to their children being reduced.