Gakujo Co., Ltd. (TSE: 2301), a Tokyo-based recruiting-information company, posted nine-month sales of ¥7.68bn for the period from November 2025 to July 2026, up 8.8% from a year earlier, and operating profit of ¥964mn, up 13.7%. The growth was lopsided: the company's flagship job-hunting media, "Re就活," barely moved, rising just 0.6% to ¥1.8bn, while its staffing-placement and events businesses did the heavy lifting.
The "Agent" placement business grew 32.3% to ¥759mn, and the events unit, which runs job fairs and career-change expos, grew 16.6% to ¥2.65bn. The campus-recruiting site "Re就活キャンパス" added 8.7% to reach ¥1.33bn. Two smaller units moved further apart: Gakujo's direct-recruiting service jumped 79.0% to ¥71mn on higher matching volumes in high-income brackets, while its Social Solution business, which carries out employment-support projects commissioned by government ministries and local authorities, fell 14.1% to ¥532mn: work tied to the current year's contracts progressed well in the third quarter, but that wasn't enough to offset a decline in contracts from the prior fiscal year during the first half.
| Segment | Sales | YoY change |
|---|---|---|
| Re就活 (core job board) | ¥1.8bn | +0.6% |
| Agent (placement) | ¥759mn | +32.3% |
| Events (job fairs) | ¥2.65bn | +16.6% |
| Re就活キャンパス (campus recruiting) | ¥1.33bn | +8.7% |
| Direct recruiting | ¥71mn | +79.0% |
| Social Solution | ¥532mn | -14.1% |
Gakujo's own explanation for the split points to graduate hiring behavior. In its July 2026 survey, students reported holding an average of 1.46 informal job offers each, up from 1.26 a year earlier. Because more students are holding multiple informal offers, their formal declines to the runners-up are arriving later in the year. That delay pushes back the moment employers realize they need to fill a slot and turn to services like "Re就活," which is used mainly to backfill after graduate rejections. The result: demand for the core media stayed nearly flat even as overall hiring appetite for young workers stayed strong, while demand for placement agents and events, which are less tied to that specific rejection cycle, kept climbing.
Gakujo also flagged rising replacement-hiring inquiries at "Re就活" and its agent service, tied to more young employees resigning shortly after receiving their summer bonus; for "Re就活" specifically, the company said new orders have grown since late July.
Management left its full-year forecast unchanged at ¥12bn in sales, up 8.9%, and ¥2.6bn in operating profit, up 11.4%. An informal offer is not an accepted job, and the delayed-decline reading comes from Gakujo's own graduate survey rather than independent labor data. Still, the sales mix shows which parts of Japan's recruiting industry the current seller's market for young talent is rewarding, and which are stuck waiting for students to formally decline their other offers.