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.
Recruitment agencies in Japan do work for foreigners, but for fewer people than the flood of recruiter messages suggests. In FY2024, 30,561 licensed fee-charging agencies filed a business report. Only 13,946 of them placed a single person that year. An agency works when your profile fits a role an employer is paying to fill. It goes quiet when it does not.
That is the short version, and 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, and 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, or "talent introduction"). A licensed agency introduces people 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 join the company as a direct employee, and the agency steps out once you start.
The distinction matters for your visa. A direct hire on an Engineer/Specialist in Humanities visa is simple. Dispatch adds a layer, because Immigration looks at the real 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 real "sign-up fee", "visa fee", or "guarantee deposit" in a normal office 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 requisition.
Some do, heavily, but the mix is not what most foreign workers assume.
Kokugai ni wataru shokugyō shōkai is the ministry's category for placements where the hiring crosses Japan's border (国外にわたる職業紹介). In FY2024, 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 analyzed the ministry's job-by-job table to build the breakdown above, and we found the skew striking. Nearly two-thirds of each cross-border agency placement in Japan was one visa type. Software development, across each 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 joining several agencies, so treat that number as a measure of effort, not of people.
No, and this is the part that gets misread. The cross-border table covers hiring from outside Japan. It leaves out foreigners who already live here and are changing jobs.
If you hold a work visa and live here, you sit in the main domestic pool: 888,993 permanent placements in FY2024. MHLW does not split that pool by country, 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 your Japanese level early. They are not gatekeeping for sport. They are matching you against a requisition that sets a language bar. The employer wrote that bar, not the recruiter. Our guide on working in Japan without speaking Japanese covers which roles really do not need it.
Because most agency outreach is speculative sourcing, not a shortlist.
A recruiter with an open role hunts for CVs that match its keywords. Messaging you costs them nothing. Putting you forward costs them standing with the client, so they only do it when they think you will pass. Silence after a warm first message often means one of four things:
That last one is more common than you would hope. We ran the numbers on the ministry's own office counts. Of the 30,561 fee-charging offices that filed FY2024 reports, 16,615 logged no placements at all. A licence is not evidence of a working desk.
You can check this yourself in a few minutes, which puts you ahead of most job seekers.
Check the licence number. Each fee-charging agency has one, in the format 13-ユ-300000, where the first digits are the prefectural labour bureau code (13 is Tokyo). The katakana ユ marks a fee-charging agency, while ム marks a free one, and it should sit in the company's website footer or its company information page.
Look up their real record. Since the 2017 amendments to the 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). They must show:
That six-month attrition rate is the most useful number on the page. An agency whose placements leave fast is either overselling 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 tolerate rather than one you will love, then check in briefly and vanish.
Apply the fee test. If anyone asks you for money, it is not a real job offer.
Agencies are strong when your situation is easy for them to read:
Agencies are weak in four cases. You are abroad with no Japan history. You are changing careers. You are targeting startups, which rarely absorb a ¥1.03 million fee. Or your field has few open requisitions.
If you fit the second list, your time pays off better elsewhere. Applying direct, referrals, and platforms like Atarashift that filter roles by visa sponsorship and language requirement all skip the fee problem. No commission has to be earned before anyone reads your CV.
Hello Work's Employment Service Centers for Foreigners. Free, government-run, with interpreters, in four cities: Tokyo (Shinjuku), Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka. Few foreign professionals use them, because the service is plain and nobody markets it. They also answer visa questions that private recruiters dodge.
Applying direct. 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, which quietly makes you a cheaper hire than an agency submission.
Referrals. Still the strongest route in any market, and doubly so in Japan, where an internal introduction carries real weight.
Several channels at once. With 1.20 active job openings per applicant in FY2025, the market is steady but no longer red-hot, and running a single 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 bars fee-charging agencies from taking fees from job seekers. A short list of occupations, such as modelling and entertainment, is exempt. The employer pays, often 30% to 35% of first-year salary. Any request for a registration, visa, or placement fee is a red flag.
Not for a direct placement. The employer sponsors your visa, because you become their employee. An agency can advise and prepare paperwork, but the hiring company files the Certificate of Eligibility. The carve-out is dispatch (haken), where the staffing firm is your legal employer and does sponsor, though Immigration still checks the real workplace and duties.
Some long-standing firms run English desks, and bilingual specialists cover IT, finance, and manufacturing. Any list here would age fast, so verify agencies yourself. Start with 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 job order the employer wrote. Language level is often 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 rule, not the recruiter's view of you.
It depends on where you are. If you are in Japan with a transferable work visa and related experience, agencies are a fair channel alongside others. If you are applying from abroad, applying direct and referrals often convert better. The cross-border agency market is concentrated in Specified Skilled Worker roles, not professional ones.
For hiring 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 who already live in Japan sit inside the wider figure of 888,993 permanent placements, which MHLW does not split by country.
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 worldwide, and a two-person office that placed nobody last year.
The data gives you a way to tell them apart before you spend weeks. Check the licence. Check the published placement record. Check the six-month attrition rate. Ask which firms they have placed into, and treat a vague reply as an answer.
And keep a second channel running. Agencies moved 888,993 people into permanent jobs last year. That is a lot, though it is still only one of several ways people in Japan find work.
How we checked these numbers. Every figure comes from the ministry reports linked below. We rebuilt the cross-border job table from MHLW's own PDF, then checked our totals against its published summary (25,389 against 25,397). Where a figure is still early, we say so. The Atarashift editorial team stands behind this post.
Sources
Most foreign residents can leave Japan for up to a year on a special re-entry permit. When you need a regular permit, what it costs and how to apply.
Where do most expats live in Japan? 19% of foreign residents live in Tokyo. See the top prefectures, per-capita shares and where work-visa holders live.
B2B sales in Japan has 2.05 openings per job seeker. What sales jobs in Japan pay by type, which visa covers them, and the 2026 language rule.
