Working visa in Japan: What's new?

Last week the announced Japanese Government plan to facilitate the visa attribution towards overseas workers. 

The country faces an unprecedented lack of workers in various sectors such as construction, agriculture, and caregivers. By 2025, these industries will face a shortage of respectively 930,000, 103,000 and 550,000 workers, a shortage that aging Japanese population will struggle to fill.

While Japan has started to push high-skilled overseas worker to settle, implementing a few years ago a point-based preferential immigration treatment towards highly skilled foreign professionals, this recent decision makes a turning point. 

The new policy, to be finalized in June as a part of the basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform, lowers the Japanese language requirements and the restrictions existing for foreign nationals applying for a work visa. It will apply to the manufacturing, care-giving sector, construction and agriculture industries, as those are the ones hit harder by the labor shortage. 

Each industry will create its own Japanese language tests and technical skills tests, so as to find a balance between these two. Agriculture and construction may even not ask for a basic level of Japanese.

This news is encouraging for both companies and overseas workers as the visa is still the first struggle when it comes to employing a foreigner. If you are interested in working in Japan as a caregiver, factory worker, or in construction and agriculture, don't forget to register now to IZANAU.