Forty-two percent of people employed in 2010 were women, the highest share since the Labor Ministry made comparable data available in 1973, when the figure was 38.5 percent.

'Really Tough'

"It's really tough right now," said Reiko Sato, 31, at the government employment office near her home in Tokyo. "It's the end of the year, so there are lots of short-term positions at department stores or restaurants that everyone's competing to get. It's easier for the girls, because that's who the stores want. I just feel bad for the men who have to come here. They probably won't have something in time for the New Year."

Manufacturing, where men outnumber women by more than 2-to-1, is still Japan's largest employer, accounting for about 16 percent of its 62.5 million workers. In construction, the ratio of men to women is 6-to-1. Since October 2008, the former shrank payrolls by 9 percent and the latter by 11 percent. Meanwhile, the health-care workforce will grow 32 percent from 2010 to 2020, according to Works Institute.

Pay Gap

As a result, one of the developed world's biggest gender-pay gaps -- second only to South Korea and roughly double the average in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- is narrowing. Women between 30 and 34 earned an average 2.99 million yen last year, 69 percent of the 4.32 million yen for men, according to National Tax Agency data. That's up from 55 percent in 1978.

The increase may help shift consumer spending toward services women prefer, such as traveling and dining out, and away from durable goods including cars and electronics, said Kyohei Morita, chief Japan economist at Barclays Capital in Tokyo. HIS Co., Japan's largest listed travel agency, has risen 3.7 percent this year, to 2,128 yen.

"It's because I work that I can go on these trips and buy my favorite makeup," said Ayumi Ohtaki, a 27-year-old call-center operator in Tokyo who earns 240,000 yen a month. While she's in no hurry to marry, she said she would want to keep her job after her wedding to ensure she could continue to buy the things she wants.

"If the money's just from my husband, I wouldn't be able to do anything fun," she said.

Birth Rate

With women like Ohtaki marrying later and delaying starting a family, and more men struggling to find work, Japan's falling birth rate is likely to get worse, said Mary Brinton, a sociology professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who studied the lives of young Japanese men shut out of well-paid, full-time work in the 1990s.

The number of babies born in 2010 was 1.07 million, down from 1.19 million in 2000, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

"This so-called mancession is going to cause continuing problems for the marriage rate and birth rate," she said. "Many young Japanese men say they want to have a stable job before they consider marrying."