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Survey Finds Childcare Leave-Taking Rate Among Men Reached Record High 40.5% in Fiscal 2024; Rate Tended to be Higher at Larger Workplaces, Lower at Smaller Ones

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:31 JST, July 31, 2025

The rate at which eligible men took childcare leave was a record-high 40.5% in fiscal 2024, according to a survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry released on Wednesday.

The rate was 10.4 percentage points higher than in the previous year, continuing an unbroken series of annual rises that has so far lasted 12 years. However, rates tended to be lower at smaller workplaces. The ministry is planning to strengthen its efforts to improve rates overall.

The survey was conducted in October last year and targeted workplaces with five or more employees, of which 3,383 responded. Analyzing the responses by workplace size, the rate was 53.8% among workplaces with 500 or more employees, but 35.8% among workplaces with 30 to 99 employees and 25.1% among workplaces with five to 29 employees. This shows a clear trend in which rates rise in relation to workplace size.

Meanwhile, the rate at which eligible women took childcare leave increased by 2.5 percentage points to 86.6%.

Meanwhile, according to the preliminary results of a ministry survey on young people’s views on work-life balance, also released on Wednesday, 70% of male respondents said they hope to take childcare leave for one month or longer. The fiscal 2024 survey on taking childcare leave had no question about the duration of the leave. According to the same survey in fiscal 2023, about 60% of men who took childcare leave said their leave was shorter than one month, indicating that even if men are taking childcare leave at an increasing rate, that does not mean they can always do so for as long as they would like.

“We‘ll try to change the atmosphere [at workplaces] that make [people] feel it’s difficult to take childcare leave, and we’ll encourage them to take childcare leave for as long as they want,” a ministry official who worked on the survey said.