The Atarashift Blog
Insights for working in Japan
Guides, interviews, and honest advice for international talent building a career in Japan.
The Atarashift Blog
Guides, interviews, and honest advice for international talent building a career in Japan.
Japan has 30,561 licensed recruitment agencies, but fewer than half placed anyone in FY2024. Government data on who they place and how to vet one.
Yes, but for fewer people than the flood of recruiter messages suggests. In FY2024, 30,561 licensed fee-charging agencies filed a business report in Japan. Only 13,946 of them placed a single person that year. An agency works when your profile fits a role an employer already pays to fill. It goes quiet when it does not.
That is the short version. The longer version is worth your time. One thing explains almost every confusing move an agency makes: who pays them, and how much. Three recruiters message you in one week. A "perfect" role vanishes. Someone asks your Japanese level before asking what you can build. All of it traces back to the fee.
Jinzai shōkai is Japan's term for recruitment placement (人材紹介, literally "talent introduction"). A licensed agency introduces candidates to employers, then collects a fee from the employer when someone is hired and stays.
Haken is the legally distinct model of temp staffing (人材派遣). With haken, the agency employs you and bills the client for your time. With jinzai shōkai, you become a direct employee of the company and the agency's involvement ends after the placement.
The distinction matters for your visa. A direct hire on an Engineer/Specialist in Humanities visa is straightforward. Dispatch arrangements add a layer, because Immigration looks at the actual workplace and duties, not just the employer on paper.
The employer pays. Article 32-3 of the Employment Security Act bars a fee-charging agency from collecting a fee from a job seeker. The only exceptions are a short list of occupations set by ministerial order, such as models and entertainers.
If an agency asks you for money to find you a job in Japan, that is your signal to stop. There is no legitimate "registration fee", "visa processing fee", or "guarantee deposit" in a standard white-collar placement.
Agencies choose between two fee structures:
Most agencies use the notified structure. Across the whole market in FY2024, agencies collected ¥913.6 billion in fees on 888,993 permanent placements. That works out to roughly ¥1.03 million per placement, up 10.9% on the year.
That number explains what you see. A recruiter earning ¥1.03 million per hire cannot spend two hours on an unusual profile. They can send forty messages to people whose CVs match an open role.
Some do, heavily. But the composition is not what most foreign professionals assume.
Kokugai ni wataru shokugyō shōkai is the ministry's category for placements where the recruiting crosses Japan's border (国外にわたる職業紹介). In FY2024, licensed fee-charging agencies made 25,397 such placements, up 42.5% year on year. Here is where they went:
| Occupation | Placements (FY2024) |
|---|---|
| Specified Skilled Worker visa (all fields) | 15,984 |
| Hospitality and serving | 2,180 |
| Facility caregiving | 2,070 |
| Food preparation | 644 |
| Manufacturing engineers | 506 |
| Agriculture | 487 |
| Retail sales | 272 |
| Development engineers | 227 |
| Construction and surveying | 171 |
| IT and communications (non-software) | 156 |
| Software development | 122 |
Source: MHLW, Employment Placement Business Report, FY2024 preliminary results, published 31 March 2026.
We parsed the ministry's occupation-level table to build the breakdown above, and the concentration is the headline. Nearly two-thirds of every cross-border agency placement in Japan was a single visa category. Software development, across every licensed agency in the country, accounted for 122 placements in a full year. That figure fell from 159 the year before, even as total cross-border placements rose 42.5%.
The funnel is steeper still. Agencies logged 3,306 new registrations from software developers abroad, against 349 job openings and 122 placements. Registration counts include the same person signing up with several agencies. Treat that number as a measure of effort, not of individual people.
No, and this is the part that gets misread. The cross-border table covers recruiting from outside Japan. It does not cover foreigners who are already living in Japan and changing jobs.
If you hold a work visa and are already here, you sit in the main domestic pool: 888,993 permanent placements in FY2024. MHLW does not break that pool down by nationality, so nobody can tell you your exact odds. What is clear is that being here changes the market you are in. A visa that transfers and a work history Japanese employers recognise both count heavily.
That is also why agencies ask about your Japanese level early. They are not gatekeeping for sport. They are matching you against a job order that already sets a language bar. The employer wrote that bar, not the recruiter. Our guide on working in Japan without speaking Japanese covers which roles genuinely do not need it.
Because most agency outreach is speculative sourcing, not a shortlist.
A recruiter with an open role searches for CVs that match its keywords. Messaging you costs them nothing. Putting you forward costs them credibility with the client. So they only do it when they think you will pass. Silence after a warm first message usually means one of four things:
That last one is more common than you would hope. We ran the ministry's own office counts: of the 30,561 licensed fee-charging offices that filed FY2024 reports, 16,615 recorded no placements at all. A licence is not evidence of a working desk.
You can verify this yourself in a few minutes, which puts you ahead of most candidates.
Check the licence number. Every legitimate fee-charging agency has one, in the format 13-ユ-300000. The first digits are the prefectural labour bureau code (13 is Tokyo). The katakana ユ marks a fee-charging agency; ム marks a free one. It should appear in the company's website footer or its company information page.
Look up their actual record. Since the 2017 amendments to the Employment Security Act, agencies must publish their performance on the ministry's 人材サービス総合サイト (jinzai.hellowork.mhlw.go.jp). Required disclosures include:
That six-month attrition figure is the most useful number on the page. An agency placing people who leave quickly is either misrepresenting roles or not screening for fit.
Watch the refund clock. Most agencies repay part of their fee if a hire quits within a set window, often three to six months. This is why a recruiter may push a role you will put up with rather than one you will love. It is also why they check in often for a few months, then vanish.
Apply the fee test. If money is requested from you, it is not a legitimate placement.
Agencies are strong when your situation is legible to them:
Agencies are weak in four situations. You are abroad with no Japan history. You are changing careers. You are targeting startups, which often cannot absorb a ¥1.03 million fee. Or your field has few open requisitions.
If you fit the second list, your time converts better elsewhere. Direct applications, referrals, and platforms like Atarashift that filter roles by visa sponsorship and language requirement all skip the fee problem. No commission has to be justified before anyone reads your CV.
Hello Work's Employment Service Centers for Foreigners. Free, government-run, with interpreters. There are four: Tokyo (Shinjuku), Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka. Few foreign professionals use them. The service is plain and nobody markets it. They also answer visa questions that private recruiters dodge.
Direct applications. Japan's foreign workforce hit a record 2,571,037 on 31 October 2025, spread across 371,215 workplaces. More of those employers now run English career pages. Applying direct costs the company nothing. That quietly makes you a cheaper hire than an agency submission.
Referrals. Still the highest-conversion route in any market, and especially useful in Japan, where an internal introduction carries real weight.
Multiple channels at once. With the active openings-to-applicants ratio at 1.20 for FY2025, the market is steady but no longer red-hot. Running one channel is slow.
Whichever route you take, the preparation is the same: a Japan-format resume, a clear answer on visa sponsorship, and readiness for Japanese interview questions. Our full guide to getting a job in Japan as a foreigner walks the whole sequence.
No. Article 32-3 of the Employment Security Act prohibits fee-charging agencies from collecting fees from job seekers. A narrow list of occupations, such as modelling and entertainment, is exempt. The employer pays, typically 30% to 35% of first-year salary. Any request for a registration, visa, or placement fee from you is a red flag.
Not for a direct placement. The employer sponsors your visa, because you become their employee. An agency can advise on the process and prepare paperwork, but the Certificate of Eligibility is filed by the hiring company. The exception is dispatch (haken), where the staffing firm is your legal employer and does sponsor, though Immigration scrutinises the actual workplace and duties.
Several established firms run English-language desks, and specialist bilingual agencies exist across IT, finance, and manufacturing. Any list here would age quickly, so verify agencies yourself. Check the licence number format. Then look up the published placement count and six-month attrition rate on the ministry's 人材サービス総合サイト.
Because they are screening against a requisition the employer already wrote. Language level is usually a hard filter in that document. It is the fastest way for a recruiter to rule a role in or out. It reflects the client's requirement rather than the recruiter's opinion of you.
It depends on where you are. If you are already in Japan with a transferable work visa and relevant experience, agencies are a reasonable channel alongside others. If you are applying from abroad, direct applications and referrals usually convert better. The cross-border agency market is concentrated in Specified Skilled Worker roles, not professional ones.
For recruitment that crosses the border, 25,397 placements in FY2024 by licensed fee-charging agencies. Of those, 15,984 were Specified Skilled Worker roles and 122 were in software development. Foreigners already resident in Japan are counted in the general figure of 888,993 permanent placements, which MHLW does not break down by nationality.
Recruitment agencies in Japan work, and the ones that work, work well. The problem is the label. It covers a specialist with ten live roles at companies that hire internationally. It also covers a two-person office that placed nobody last year.
The data gives you a way to tell them apart before you invest weeks. Check the licence. Check the published placement record. Check the six-month attrition. Ask which specific companies they have placed into, and treat vagueness as an answer.
And keep a second channel running. Agencies moved 888,993 people into permanent jobs last year. That is a lot, and it is still only one of several ways people in Japan find work.
Sources
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