In Japan, Foreigners Increasingly Fill Workforce Gaps
Responding to labor shortage, nation that once shunned non-Japanese workers is overcoming its resistance
TOKYO—Non-Japanese are taking a bigger role in powering Japan’s economy as a labor shortage impels the country to overcome its long-standing resistance to foreign workers.
With hundreds of thousands of jobs going unfilled, businesses from noodle shops to auto-parts factories are squeezing every existing channel to get help.
“Japanese businesses need workers, and the number of Japanese college graduates keeps decreasing,” said Toshihiro Menju, a managing director at the Japan Center for International Exchange who supports increased immigration as an answer to the nation’s sluggish economy. “That gap will continue to rise.”
Many Asians come to Japan as students who are allowed to work nearly 30 hours a week. Others qualify as technical trainees under an internship program that aims to teach them skills they can bring back home.
That program has been criticized by the U.S. and international organizations as an avenue for cheap labor that lacks effective oversight or protections. Japan has described it as a philanthropic effort and said it would step up oversight.
Still other foreigners work without proper visas.
In 2014, there were some 788,000 legal foreign workers in Japan, up 15% over a two-year period to about 1.4% of the legal workforce, according to the Ministry of Labor.
Anh Mai Thi, 28 years old, arrived in Tokyo in late 2012 from her hometown near Hanoi, spurred by an interest in the Japanese language. Back home, Ms. Thi studied economics and worked for a company that sought to expand Internet coverage in rural areas.
Now, she works two part-time jobs—as a cashier at a supermarket and greeting customers at a ramen shop—to make ends meet while attending vocational school at night. “You have to work a part-time job to live in Japan,” she said.
Economists see Japan’s aging and declining population as one of the biggest challenges to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s quest to get the country growing again. Unemployment is near the lowest level in decades as open positions go unfilled. Yet many Japanese are reluctant to take manual-labor jobs at the wages available.
Anh Mai Thi, who came to Tokyo from her hometown near Hanoi, Vietnam. She now works two jobs while attending vocational school at night.PHOTO: LISA DU/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“I think foreign workers can be the golden egg that will produce,” said Mr. Menju, the immigration advocate.
Others say Japan already has enough foreign workers. Some cite difficulties with integration and concerns that Japanese workers could lose out from an influx of foreigners willing to accept lower pay.
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