Employment Situation of International Students
Employment rate of international students in Japan is approximately 60% of job applicants. Factors of why international students have a lower employment rate compared to Japanese students are their insufficient understanding of Japan’s job hunting culture, insufficient Japanese language ability, and relatively low number of posting for international students compared to Japanese students. International students will have a higher possibility to find a job in Japan by understanding Japan’s job hunting culture at an early stage and preparing well such as improve Japanese language ability.
(1)Number of International Student Graduate and Employees
International students’ employment rate at Japanese companies has increased by approximately 3.8 times from 6,073 in 2009 to 20,402 in 2018. In the past 10 years, international students’ employment rate has continued to rise and reached the highest employment rate of 36.8% in 2019.
In order to compare employment rate with the employment rate of Japanese students’ data, it is necessary to understand the number of international students who desire to remain and work in Japan after graduation. According to a particular survey, it is said 60% of international students desire to stay and work in Japan after graduation.
Based on the calculation of 2019 data, of the international students desiring to work in Japan, approximately 60% of the students were able to be employed in Japan.
Japan Student Services Organization “International Student Future Course / Degree-Granting Status Survey”
(2)Employee Size of Place of Employment
International students strongly want to work for large companies and have a high tendency to desire to work for famous companies.
However, as you can see from the graph, only 13.1% of the international students are employed at companies with more than 2,000 employees. 75.8% of the students are employed at small and medium-sized companies with less than 1,000 employees. Of this, 37.2% are employed at small and medium-sized companies with less than 50 employees.
In Japan, small and medium-sized companies do not only function as subcontractors under large companies. There are many blue-chip companies that have world’s highest level technologies or market shares in their fields. You will be able to increase your employment choices by researching not only the company scale but also the business contents of the company.
Immigration Bureau, Ministry of Justice “Japanese Company Employment Status of Internationals Students as of 2019”
(3)Industry of Place of Employment
Regarding industry of employment, 15% of the students are employed in the manufacturing industry, while over 85% work for non-manufacturing companies.
The commerce / trading industry tops the list (14.6%, followed by employment agency / labor dispatch business (10.4%), information and communication industry (9.5%, and the fourth most being lodging industry (6.5%).
Immigration Bureau, Ministry of Justice “Japanese Company Employment Status of Internationals Students as of 2019”
