Furthermore, over a third of Japan’s young professionals expect to work until the day they die.

The group polled 11,000 working millennials from 18 countries, as well as more than 8,000 ManpowerGroup millennial associate employees and 1,500 hiring managers across 25 countries.

Two-thirds of respondents were optimistic about their immediate job prospects. Those with the brightest outlook were in Mexico, China, Switzerland and Germany, while the least positive reside in Japan, Greece and Italy – a reflection of economic, political and cultural factors in these countries, ManpowerGroup noted. Under 40 per cent of Japanese millennials are upbeat about their careers, a share even lower than in Greece, which has been hit by an economic crisis.

The findings are worth noting because Japan continues to be an important market in Asia for wealth managers, who will want to track demographic trends as they target the next generation of clients. Earlier this week, Credit Suisse published research showing that Japan achieved the highest rise in wealth in 2016 amongst individual countries, with an increase of $3.9 trillion, followed by a $1.7 trillion increase in the US (see here for more details).

Click here for a recent guest article by wealth manager Charles Stanley looking at Japan’s debt pile, which is equivalent to 230 per cent of its gross domestic product.