This paper examines the impact of supply-demand balance in the labor market on the recent ongoing trend toward marriage avoidance in Japan, incorporatingreviews of previous studies. From a theoretical standpoint, declining income and wages could be seen either as encouraging or as discouraging marriage, but according to empirical analyses inprevious studies of Japanese marriage behavior, for men in particular regular employment with high earning potential appears to have the effect of encouraging marriage, and being hired as a regular employee immediately upon graduation appears correlated with younger marriage ages. For women, as well, some previous studies have found a positive correlation between being hired as a regular employee immediately upon graduation and getting married younger. It follows that the decline in hiring of young people as regular employees, as a result of economic stagnation, may be one of the causes of the recent trend toward marriage avoidance.