Japan by the Numbers: Check Who Was Counted

Somebody puts Japan's job-to-applicant ratio on a slide: 1.18 openings per applicant. It sounds like a tight market. For IT roles the figure is 1.33. For office work it is 0.29. For construction it is 8.25.

Most widely quoted Japan numbers are correct. They just count a different group than the reader assumes. I wrote this column for executives who make Japan decisions from data, and for anyone who has been handed a Japan statistic and told to act on it. Before you use a number, check the denominator, who reported it and what scope it covers. Once you do, the decision usually changes.

Can I find the people I need, and where?

It depends on the occupation and the place far more than on the national average. Tokyo's openings ratio is 1.70 counted by place of registration and 1.07 counted by place of work. Foreign workers now number 2.57 million, five times the 2008 level.

• Japan Labor Market Report 2026: unemployment at 2.5%, wage deals above 5%, a ¥983.5 billion placement market and AI changing how hiring works.
• Japan's job-to-applicant ratio only makes sense by occupation, from construction at 8.25 to office work at 0.29.
• Tokyo vs the Regions: Japan's Job Openings Ratio: why the workplace-based figure is the one to use when choosing a regional site.
• Foreign workers in Japan: who the 2.57 million are, and where. Vietnam leads with 606,000; China has 432,000 and still tops white-collar visas.
• How Good Is English in Japan, Really? Japan ranks 96th on the EF index, yet a quarter of TOEIC takers score 745 or more. Decide which language is mandatory first.
• Is LinkedIn Useful in Japan? What the Numbers Say: about 3 million members, small against a 70 million labor force, but dense in foreign firms, tech and bilingual roles.
• Japan's 98% graduate employment rate: check the denominator. It counts only job seekers; of all graduates, 77% got jobs.
• Japan's 3-Year Graduate Turnover, Taken Apart: about 3 in 10 leave within three years, and the real spread is by industry and company size.

Will people actually move?

Fewer than you would think. In 2025, 10.23 million people in Japan wanted to change jobs and 3.3 million did. The men's job-change rate went from 3.0% in 1990 to 3.8% in 2022. Over three decades, it moved less than one point.

• Japan's job-change rate moved two points in thirty years, and men aged 45 to 54 never passed 2.6%.
• 10.23 Million Want to Change Jobs in Japan. 3.3 Million Did. A record number want to move, yet 65% of them are not even searching.
• How Long Do People in Japan Stay at One Company? The 12.4-year average is a mean; the median is 5 to 9 years. Order your outreach by tenure band.
• Resignation proxies in Japan: is it 2% or nearly half? Estimates run from 2% to 48.7% depending on who was asked.
• Japan's Resignation Proxies: One in Four Went Quiet. Operators are closing while the share of companies receiving proxy resignations rose to 8.7%.

What does a person cost, and how is pay set?

Plan on 1.2 to 1.5 times salary for one hire. Pay itself has been nearly flat for thirty years: average pay rose from ¥111,000 in 1949 to ¥4.67 million in 1997 and then stalled, with real pay peaking in 1992.

• What one hire in Japan really costs: 1.2x to 1.5x salary: a ¥6 million hire, costed line by line with and without an agency.
• Japan's wages: up forty times, then flat for thirty years, and what that history means when you set pay today.
• Japan's job-based pay: how many companies really do it. 78.5% say managers get role or job pay; 26.4% have or plan job-based HR; 2.4% of those cover all staff.
• Overtime in Japan: 13 hours a month, or 21? The official figure, the workers' figure and the unpaid hours in between.
• Japan's M-Curve Is Gone. The L-Curve Isn't. Regular employment for women falls from 62.8% in their late twenties to about 40% in their forties.
• 100,000 Centenarians: Will Working at 70 Become Normal? 36.2% of people aged 70 to 74 worked in 2025, mostly part-time or self-employed.
• A third of ex-managers in Japan stepped down unexpectedly: 35.3% in a 2026 Persol survey, 81.0% of them after reorganizations.
• Japan sees 3,400 labor tribunal cases a year. That's not small. Half are over dismissals, and the article prices what one dispute really costs.

Who are you selling to?

Mostly to small companies run by older owners. Japan has about 10,000 large companies and 2.85 million micro ones, the average president is 60.8, and half of companies have no successor.

• SMEs are 99% of Japanese companies. Decide who you're selling to first: pick the layer, then price the cost of reaching each company in it.
• The average company president is over sixty. What that means if you're selling. A decision-chain problem, with succession as the window.
• The country with the most century-old companies: why newcomers can't move customers: half the world's century-old companies are here, and they hold the channels. Borrow them.
• Eighty percent of Japanese companies use the cloud. For what? Seventy percent just store files, which limits what the market can absorb from you.
• A good market that is hard to enter: how low Japan's inward FDI is: 5 to 9% of GDP, the lowest in the G7, and step one is a map.

Can I trust this number?

Often only after you have checked the scope. One Hitachi securities report lists four female manager ratios, 17.4%, 22.7%, 8.9% and 6.8%, all correct for different scopes. Only 1.8% of Japanese firms published their accounts in the official gazette in 2022.

• Why you can't find most Japanese companies' financials: mark the gap as not disclosed and use three legal proxies.
• How to read human capital disclosure in Japanese annual reports. Six numbers, including the pay gap and men's parental leave, that sketch a listed company's workforce.
• One Company, Four Female Manager Ratios: align the scope before you compare companies.
• In Japan, "neither agree nor disagree" is an answer. Where a stance is expected, neutral reads as negative.
• Psychology Studies Managers Quote: Only 36% Replicated: where Stanford Prison and the marshmallow test stand, and how HR should check a claim.
• Does Monitoring Raise Performance? Data on 23,461 People. Across 94 samples, monitoring and performance correlate at about zero while stress rises.
• Muir's Super-Chicken Study: What the Papers Actually Say: the mortality figures from 1996, and where the popular TED version drifts.
• Terracotta Army fingerprints: who did the work? 79 fingerprints, an estimate of who left them, and what it says about credit at work.

A habit for any Japan statistic

When a number lands on your desk, ask who was counted, who answered, and whether a company's own figure has an independent source behind it. The graduate employment rate, the overtime figures and the resignation-proxy surveys all change meaning on those questions. Government series move slowly, so some figures here may be a year old by the time you read them.

The rule I use for company figures is in the glossary under claim vs. fact. To see how these numbers feed actual decisions, read Launching in Japan.

Shorter thoughts go on LinkedIn.