The common scenario of career-type jobs waiting for Japanese university students upon graduation is becoming uncertain as large companies' hiring numbers have fallen since spring for the first time in nine years because of economic challenges, information technology disruptions and low-interest-rate environment.

A Nikkei survey done shows 0.5% fewer graduates and even undergraduates from Japanese universities accepted jobs at the beginning of the month than those hired in April.

Hiring totals only fell below expected job offers in 2010 when Japan, entering its third decade of stagnation, got overtaken by China as the world's second-largest economy, its flagship company Toyota had to recall 10 million vehicles and the country's prime minister resigned after three years.

The current survey shows that it is jobs from banks and securities companies that are getting lesser and lesser.

From an Oct. 1 survey of 1,035 major companies, 924 companies gave a total of 118,837 students accepting job offers.

This is an 11.1% job reduction from banks and 26.4% lesser jobs from securities companies compared to that in April.

Japan's financial industry is having a long low-interest-rate environment with nonfinancial companies and fintech startups making their presence felt stronger than ever.

With automation in the financial industry becoming more in, cutting back on hiring is looking like to become a trend.

Japan's largest, MUFG Bank, had a job reduction of 44.7% from its April hires to only 530 for 2020s hiring season.

Mizuho Financial Group had their offers down 21.4% to 550 job hires.

Both affected by falling investment trust sales are Nomura Securities' 333 October job offers which are a 44.7% trimming down from April while Daiwa Securities Group job offers got lower by 29.4% from April to 480.

However, there's a 1.1% increase in nonfinancial industries with job offers still decreasing in 10 out of the manufacturing industry's 19 segments.

Auto and auto parts makers' jobs also got trimmed by 5.5% than the hires made in April.

Machinery companies' job offers fell by 3.9% as well.

Spring hiring totals from electrical appliance makers are also suffering from job tenders falling 1.3%.

Precision motor manufacturer Nidec had 249 jobs, 38.8% lesser than its hires six months ago.

Nidec's representative attributed this to the "increased uncertainty in the global economy."

Looking good are the spring hiring figures of "other retail businesses" with a 7.2% increase.

Drugstore operators are on a hiring binge with Ain Holdings offering 900 jobs, a 120% increase from April.

The rollout of 5G, the technology, enabling users to receive and send data 100 times faster than the current 4G, brought about the 9.4% improvement over April hires in the communications industry.

Allocation of 5G frequencies got approved for KDDI Corp., NTT Docomo Inc., SoftBank Corp. and e-commerce biggie Rakuten which had 700 job offers, up 70% for Japan's new university grad students.