Comment by unsignedint

While things like the expectation of lifetime employment (or at least very long tenure) may sound appealing, it also creates a job market with very low fluidity. In practice, if you miss that narrow “fresh out of school” hiring window, you can end up facing pretty unfavorable prospects later on.

People can still get hired mid-career, of course, but many companies traditionally hire based more on long-term potential than immediately usable skills, since they expect to train employees heavily through OJT. That also means the number of openings for experienced hires can be relatively limited. And because of the seniority-based structure, even experienced workers may end up starting near the bottom anyway.

There was an entire generation of people who missed that initial hiring window because of economic downturns and hiring freezes, and many of them still struggle to land stable permanent positions even today.

Things are gradually changing, but many structural assumptions are still there. For example, parts of the legal and employment system are historically built around the assumption of lifetime employment, which also makes it difficult for companies to dismiss permanent employees once they are hired.