Only 10 Pct of Firms in Japan to Hire Foreign Students

November 7, 2018

Tokyo--Only 11.7 pct of businesses in Japan plan to hire foreign students graduating in the spring of 2019, a survey by job information provider Mynavi Corp. showed Tuesday.

The survey was conducted in September through early October, with valid responses from 3,013 companies across the country.

More than 80 pct of respondents said they are not planning to employ foreign students.

As the reason for such move, many companies said they have not prepared a proper work environment for foreign workers.

The reason cited by the largest proportion, or 43.8 pct of respondents, was that an environment to accept such workers is not ready yet. The second-largest share, or 43.2 pct, said that an environment in which foreign workers can play an active role has not been prepared.

Respondents who cited lack of Japanese-language proficiency as the reason accounted for only 24.7 pct, while the share of those seeing procedures to obtain a visa as a difficulty stood at 14.6 pct.

Among listed companies, however, 28.1 pct of respondents said they will hire foreign students.

As for those graduating in the spring of 2020, 10.7 pct of overall respondents plan to hire such students, while 28.8 pct are considering recruiting them.

Those with no plans to do so accounted for 60.4 pct.

The proportion of foreign students in Japan joining the workforce in the country stood at 36 pct in fiscal 2016. The government aims to bring the figure to 50 pct within the five years from fiscal 2018. Jiji Press