Japan to Set Up New Resident Status for Skilled Foreign Workers

May 31, 2018

Tokyo- The Japanese government plans to set up a new resident status as early as next April to bring in skilled workers from overseas as part of efforts to address serious labor shortages, officials said Wednesday.

At present, skilled workers from abroad need to return to their home countries after up to five years of training under Japan's foreign trainee program.

The government hopes to accept work-ready foreigners with specialties and skills to help shore up the country's productivity.

The plan for a new resident status will be included in annual economic and fiscal policy guidelines that the government aims to adopt as early as June 15, the officials said.

The guidelines will not include numerical targets for curbing social security spending for the three years starting next April.

Only the government's commitment to continue efforts for spending curbs will be spelled out in the guidelines.

In the previous three years, the government achieved its goal of limiting the annual growth of social security spending to some 500 billion yen through measures such as a reduction in official drug prices.

For the three years starting in April 2019, the finance and welfare ministries failed to narrow gaps. The Finance Ministry's call for stricter spending curbs was resisted by the welfare ministry, which hopes to secure a certain level of budgets.

The policy guidelines will include plans to take economic measures under the fiscal 2019 and 2020 budgets to smooth the way for a consumption tax increase from the current 8 pct to 10 pct in October 2019.

Under the guidelines, the government will postpone the goal of achieving a primary budget surplus by five years to fiscal 2025. Instead, the government will set interim targets for fiscal 2021 to examine progress. Jiji Press