The serious recession hit Japan as well as other developed countries. Lots of workers have been laid off or many companies have scheduled the voluntary redundancy packages. I'm working in a middle-sized hospital as a surgeon. Most of my co-workers have special licenses or abilities, so they, including me, are supposed to be resistant to the economic stagnation, in other words, we are the last people to lose our jobs.
My hospital has about 70 staff members except for the outsourcing workers such as in the pharmacy, the dietary department and the maintenance service. Several recruits join us occasionally. The tendency of them seems to have changed lately. They are eager to get some licenses. They switch jobs and get started newly in the field of medicine or welfare service. It might be because this kind of jobs are unaffected by the economic depression. The previous job of our most recently coming recruit was the processing of fish meat. He was standing by the line that made dried bonito shavings in a factory. He is going to enter the school of nursing next spring that is open in the early evening. He works in the daytime until 16:00 at my hospital as an assistant of the care workers, and goes to school after that. It takes much longer time to get the license in this type of school, but he has to make money as well. His age is just 30. His late start as a full-fledged member of society, compared to the people of around his age is apparent. His next five years would be hard. I really wish he will get to the destination as soon as possible.
(Vocabulary)
redundancy [C,U](英) 余剰人員（の解雇）
voluntary redundancy 希望退職
dietary department （病院などの）給食部
company recruit / new recruit 新入社員
occasionally たまに, 時々, 時折
very occasionally めったに（…ない）
dried bonito (shavings) かつお節
- / full / full-fledged member of society 社会人
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