Even with 8x the Job Openings, New Hires Quit: The One-Page Fix for Construction Firms Before They Start Hiring

"We can't hire anyone." Whenever I talk to construction industry executives, this phrase almost always comes up. Looking at the numbers, it is certainly true. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's "Employment Referrals for General Workers (November 2025)," the active job opening ratio for construction framework workers (reinforcing bar, formwork, scaffolding, etc.) is 8.04. This is the highest among all occupations. Since the average for all occupations is 1.18, the difference is about sevenfold. This means seven companies are competing for a single job seeker.

However, what has been bothering me lately is what lies behind this "inability to hire." People who were hired with great effort end up quitting after a while. I suspect that this "hiring but not retaining" problem is actually more deeply rooted. Today, I would like to write about this based on public data and the words of a recruitment professional I met the other day.

■ The smaller the company, the sooner new hires quit

First, let's look at data that is often overlooked. According to the "Status of Turnover for New Graduates (Graduates of March 2022)" published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on October 24, 2025, the percentage of people who quit within three years of employment is 37.9% for new high school graduates and 33.8% for new university graduates. More than one in three people leave their jobs within three years.

What I want to focus on even more is the difference based on company size. If you line up the data from the same survey by establishment size, it looks like this.

[Turnover Rate Within 3 Years for New Graduates (By Establishment Size - High School/University)]

・Fewer than 5 employees: High school 63.2% / University 57.5%

・5-29 employees: High school 54.6% / University 52.0%

・30-99 employees: High school 45.2% / University 41.9%

・1,000 or more employees: High school 26.3% / University 27.0%

(Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, "Status of Turnover for New Graduates (Graduates of March 2022)," published October 24, 2025)

In companies with fewer than 5 employees, 63.2% of new high school graduates quit within three years. Compared to 26.3% for companies with 1,000 or more employees, this is more than double. The smaller the company, the harder it is to hire, yet the faster people quit. Since the construction industry is full of small-scale businesses, I believe this figure is something that hits home for many.

Hiring costs money. There is an estimate that mid-career hiring costs 800,000 to 1 million yen per person. Even for new graduates, if you include everything from recruitment advertising to post-hiring training, it is by no means cheap. More than half of that hard-earned investment disappears in less than three years. I believe this is not so much a failure of recruitment as it is a problem with the design of the "onboarding" process. ■ Before hiring, fix the "current state of the company"

The other day, I had the opportunity to have a long talk with an executive whose main business is recruitment support. This is a professional who is involved in the upstream side of recruitment, starting from the creation of job advertisements. Their words really resonated with me.

"I don't sell 'methods' like job media."

What does that mean? Many companies think, "We don't have enough people, so let's just post a job opening." But this person says that before posting a job, they first look at the "current state of the company." Are negative online reviews being left unaddressed? Are they making the most of free resources like Hello Work or recruitment sites? And above all, is there a system in place to accept people into the company? They argue that pouring money into media without this foundation is like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it.

I think this order of "methods (media/tools) come last; fix the current situation first" applies directly to construction sites as well. Before trying to improve how you write a job posting, have you decided "what, who, and how" a new hire should be taught? If this is ambiguous, no matter how good the person you hire is, they will quit before they can grow.

■ An "acceptable form" can be created from a single sheet

So, how do you build an onboarding system? What I always recommend is not to create a massive manual, but to start by writing down the work on a single sheet of paper.

The task is simple: just write down all the work that a new hire will be involved in and sort it into three categories.

[Three-Way Task Categorization]

・Tasks that can only be taught on-site (setup, safety judgments, artisan skills) → Secure time for veterans to teach these directly

・Administrative/manual tasks with set procedures (daily reports, photo organization, material ordering, document transcription) → Create procedure manuals so anyone can do them, or outsource to AI or third parties

・Tasks that are unnecessary to begin with (duplicate records, pro forma documents) → Eliminate them

Having this one-page guide provides new hires with a map of "what to do first" and "what to ask a senior about." It reduces the number one cause of turnover: being left alone without knowing what to learn. Furthermore, this guide is effective not only for hiring but also for filling gaps when a veteran suddenly takes time off. It kills two birds with one stone.

The important thing here is the order. Before increasing staff, first organize existing work into a "ready-to-receive" format. Methods (job boards, recruitment tools) can come later. When recruitment professionals say they "don't sell by method," I believe they are referring to this exact order. ■ Summary: Organize before you hire

The job opening-to-applicant ratio of 8.04x in construction framing work highlights just how difficult it is to hire people. However, the reality is that in companies with fewer than five employees, over 60% of those hard-won hires end up quitting.

That is precisely why I want to propose "organizing before hiring." Before posting a job, write down your tasks on one page and create a structure that is ready to receive new staff. This protects your recruitment costs and makes the workplace easier for current employees as well.

At your company, is the situation such that you can explain "what to learn, from whom, and how" to a new hire using a single sheet of paper? If not, why not start with that one page before posting a job opening?

Recommended Reading

There are pitfalls not only after hiring, but also "during the hiring process."

An article that takes "organizing before increasing staff" one step further.

Whether a new hire "stays" also depends on how evaluations are communicated.

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ShakeHands LLC

A business partner that organizes labor shortages from the structural level

Short on staff? But "hiring" isn't always the right answer.

ShakeHands LLC is a partner that addresses labor shortages and business expansion for small and medium-sized enterprises, organizing options for recruitment, outsourcing, and AI utilization to design the optimal approach. We don't make proposals just to sell; we think together with you about choices as management decisions.

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▶ <Warifull> Organizing labor shortages in the construction industry through "task decomposition"

Before increasing staff, first divide the work. In a 60-minute free consultation, you can take home your company's "first draft of a task breakdown sheet (one page)" (consultation and consulting fees are 0 yen).