new graduate jobs in Japan

Table of Contents

1 Foreign residents work in Japan.

Foreign residents work in Japan.

Many people who have studied Japanese or interested in Japan dream working in Japan someday in their life. There are lots of attractive companies related to Japanese cultures such as video games industry Nintendo, Sony, Square Enix and so on. If you are speaking English, you would have highly chance to teach English in Japan. If you are a business major, there are many companies looking for a person who can communicate in English in business without high Japanese skills. Globalism in Japanese companies are growing rapidly and widely welcoming foreign new graduates. For example, Rakuten which is one of the biggest Online shopping mall determined English as a common language in the company last year and has been hiring many English speakers. Today, there are high opportunities for foreign new graduate jobs in Japan. Hopefully, this post helps people eager to live in Japan, new graduates to job hunting in Japan and new college students to choose the major.

Number of foreign legal workers in 2013

According to Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Kose-rodo-sho 厚生労働省), there are about 720000 foreign residents are working in Japan; moreover about 80% (550,000) of them are non-contracted full time workers. The graph below shows the ratio of foreign nations based on the Census 2013.

List of working fields and percentage of foreign workers.

Work Field	Number of companies	Number of foreign workers	percentage of foreign workers in the work field (exclude contracted workers)
Total	126729	547117
Farming and Forestry	5890	15588	2.1%
fishery	471	1498	0.2%
Mining	59	142	0.0%
Construction	5553	13246	2.2%
Food manufacture	5309	54239	8.6%
Textile industry	4757	26443	4.0%
metalworking industry	3603	16341	3.6%
Others manufacturing	6387	54788	12.2%
Electric, gas, waterworks	62	126	0.0
Information(technology)	4875	21067	3.9%
transportation	2801	13651	2.8%
wholesales and retails	1773	79751	11.1%
finance and insurance	851	6476	1.0%
real estate and trading	1087	3836	0.7%
Academia and special professions	4061	15122	3.3%
Accommodation industry (hotels and restaurants)	16450	76839	11.5%
Service industry and entertainments	2192	8252	1.4%
Education	4301	44390	6.9%
Medical care and public health	4601	9042	1.4%
Multiservice industory	592	1504	0.3%
Government affairs	1575	762	1.1%
Unclassified fields	49479	84014	0.5%

source: http://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/houdou/0000036114.html

The definition of these work fields are very vague. This categorisation was done by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I do not know which companies exactly belong to the field.

According to the table, in manufacturing and physical labor industries has high population percentage of foreign workers, but maily they are from developing counties without educations. However, there are some fields which hire foreign educated residents highly.

1. Education

Native English speakers are highly demanded in Japan since the Japanese government declares to require English program for public elementary schools within 5 years, and the companies globalization incites the Japanese business men to English learning to maintain the position in the company. English skill has been highly valued for last couple years. Moreover, there are lots of English teaching opportunities and programs available such as JET program (http://www.jetprogramme.org/). The program does not require you a linguistic background, but just a BA or BS degree.

2. Information (technology)

If you are in the field of computer science or computer engineering, you have higher opportunities to work in Japan. Many foreign IT companies are coming into Japan and founding local corporations and sending the natives to Japan. Moreover, in many IT companies including startups, there is usually no language barriers among engineers which happens when Japanese people wants to work in foreign countries as well. From my experience, IT companies have higher ethnic diversity than other work fields. The work environments in the IT companies are easier to fit in for the foreign workers.

3. Academia and special professions

This field is very limited, but Japanese college and research institutes hire foreign residents to do special researches. If you are in MA or PhD, you would still find a job in Japan.

Where to find the jobs in Japan

Lastly, this is just statistics of foreign residents in Japanese work fields. It is not necessary to work at Japanese companies to get a job in Japan. If you are in the international business field or your company in the native land has businesses in Japan or with Japanese companies, that is another way to work in Japan.

For new graduates in the U.S, I highly recommend to go to Career Forums in Los Angeles and Boston. (Boston is the biggest) The author actually started career in Japan from the Boston career forum.
LA career forum: http://www.careerforum.net/event/la/?lang=E
Boston carrer forum: http://www.careerforum.net/event/bos/?lang=E

For freshmen or people who are in the middle of deciding your major planning to work in Japan, this post is informative and helps your decision.

Next post is about new graduates salary in Japan.