---
title: Five Reasonable Hiring Requirements Left Ten People in Japan
description: Run one job description through Japan's official statistics and five reasonable requirements leave about ten likely candidates a year. Count the pool first.
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-11/hiring-requirements-multiply-cover-en-2026-10-m.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

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Organizations & Hiring

In this article

1. [Why reasonable requirements add up to an impossible one](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s1)
2. [One rough count, with public numbers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s2)
3. [Where this estimate goes wrong](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s3)
4. [Count the pool before you write the job description](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s4)

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# Five Reasonable Hiring Requirements Left Ten People in Japan

One job description, counted with public data

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)7 min read

Contents4

1. [Why reasonable requirements add up to an impossible one](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s1)
2. [One rough count, with public numbers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s2)
3. [Where this estimate goes wrong](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s3)
4. [Count the pool before you write the job description](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply#s4)

Most hard-to-fill roles in Japan are hard because of arithmetic. Each line on the job description looks reasonable on its own, and the candidate has to satisfy all of them at once, so the pool shrinks by multiplication. I ran one ordinary job description through Japan's official statistics. Five requirements left roughly ten people in the whole country who are likely to change jobs this year.

## Why reasonable requirements add up to an impossible one

Because the people writing them add, and the market multiplies.

In the meeting where a job description gets written, the question asked about each line is whether it's reasonable. Business-level Japanese? Of course. Industry experience? Sensible. Has managed a team? Fair. Every line passes its own test. But a candidate has to pass all of them together. If one requirement keeps a tenth of the market and the next keeps a fifth, you're left with 2%.

Adding has a second effect. Requirements only go up. Every interviewer wants one more line for the thing they care about, and nobody owns taking lines out. The description gets longer, the pool gets smaller, and six months later the conclusion is that there's no talent in Japan.

## One rough count, with public numbers

Here is the role: head of sales for the Japan entity of a Chinese software company. Business Japanese. Mandarin good enough to work directly with headquarters. Experience in IT. Has led a team. Willing to join a company of about thirty people.

This is an estimate. I'll show where each ratio comes from, and two of the steps are my own assumptions.

**Step 1, Mandarin.** No statistic counts Mandarin speakers in Japan, so I use nationality as a stand-in. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's report on foreign employment, 431,949 Chinese nationals (including Hong Kong and Macau) were working in Japan at the end of October 2025. The count comes from employer filings and excludes special permanent residents. Plenty of Japanese people speak Mandarin, but nobody counts them.

**Step 2, IT.** In the same report, 46,658 of those workers, or 10.8%, were in the information and communications industry.

**Step 3, has led a team.** Japan has no statistic for "has managed ten people." The closest is the "managers" occupation in the Statistics Bureau's Labour Force Survey, roughly section chief and above plus company directors. In 2025 that was 1.25 million people, 1.8% of 68.28 million employed. Nobody publishes the manager share among Chinese IT workers in Japan, so my estimating assumption is that the national ratio applies. That gives about 850 people.

**Step 4, actually moving this year.** The same survey counted 3.3 million job changers in 2025, about 4.8% of everyone employed. Assume, again, that the national rate applies, and 850 becomes about 40. If you count people who want to change jobs but haven't, 10.23 million or about 15%, it's around 130.

**Step 5, the last two lines.** Came up through software sales, and willing to join a thirty-person company. There's no data for either. My assumption, a generous one, is that each keeps half. That leaves about 10.

Five requirements multiplied leave about ten likely candidates a year in all of Japan

Step-by-step estimate starting from Chinese nationals working in Japan. Steps 1 and 2: MHLW foreign employment report, end of October 2025. Steps 3 and 4: national ratios from the Statistics Bureau's Labour Force Survey, 2025. Step 5: assumption

1. 1Chinese nationals working in Japan: 431,949Employer filings; includes Hong Kong and Macau, excludes special permanent residents
2. 2In information and communications: 46,65810.8%, from the same report
3. 3Has led a team: about 850Assumption: borrows the national share of managers, 1.8% (1.25 million of 68.28 million)
4. 4Changes jobs this year: about 40Assumption: borrows the national job-changer rate, 4.8% (3.3 million of 68.28 million); about 130 if you count those who only want to
5. 5Software sales background, will join a 30-person firm: about 10No data; each line assumed to keep half

Every line is reasonable. Multiplied, the pool is smaller than your hiring timeline.

Figure 1. Starting from 431,949 Chinese nationals working in Japan at the end of October 2025, 46,658 were in information and communications; the national manager share of 1.8% leaves about 850, the annual job-change rate of 4.8% about 40, and two more requirements that each keep half leave about 10.

Ten people, spread across the country, each moving at some point in the year. Your posting has to be live during their few weeks, and they have to see it. Three months without a hire is the expected result.

For contrast, run the Japanese side. The Labour Force Survey had 3.02 million people employed in information and communications in 2025. The same 1.8% and 4.8% give about 2,700 managers moving per year. The drop from 2,700 to 40 is mostly one line: Mandarin. I broke down where Japan's foreign workers are in [Foreign workers in Japan: who the 2.57 million are, and where](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/foreign-workers-in-japan-by-the-numbers?hsLang=en).

If your company is American or European and the line says English instead of Mandarin, I'd expect the shape to be similar. I can't show it with numbers, because Japan doesn't count English speakers either.

## Where this estimate goes wrong

In both directions.

It may be too low because the requirements aren't independent. A Chinese national managing IT sales in Japan is probably more open to a small company than the average Chinese worker, and more likely to come from software. Correlated requirements leave more people than straight multiplication suggests.

It may be too high because step 3 borrows a national ratio. Many Chinese IT workers in Japan are engineers in their twenties and thirties. My guess is their share of section chiefs and above is below 1.8%, so 850 could be generous.

The 4.8% job-change rate is also an average across everyone. Managers move at a different rate from juniors, and I don't have the breakdown by level. The gap between wanting to move and moving is in [10.23 Million Want to Change Jobs in Japan. 3.3 Million Did.](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/willing-vs-actual-job-changers-japan?hsLang=en)

So don't hold on to the number 10. Hold on to the order of magnitude. Off by a factor of two, it's 5 to 20. It isn't 200.

## Count the pool before you write the job description

A top-down estimate tells you the order of magnitude and nothing more. When I actually need to hire, I count from the bottom up.

That's what a [talent map](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps?hsLang=en) is for. List the companies where this person works today: direct competitors, firms upstream and downstream that serve the same customers, adjacent industries where the daily work is the same. Estimate how many people sit in the relevant function at each, from annual securities reports, company websites and LinkedIn. Then hold each requirement against that list. Across these few dozen companies, how many people meet all of them?

The answer usually lands in one of two places.

Sometimes the pool exists. There are fifty or a hundred people, and they just aren't looking. Then the problem is reach. You have to go to them, because they won't apply.

Sometimes the pool is single digits. Waiting another quarter won't change it. You have to go back to the job description and decide which line to give up first. I wrote about how to tell a gap you can close in six months from one you can't in [A talent map is not a list](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/talent-map-is-not-a-list?hsLang=en), so I won't repeat it. Make that call before the role is posted, not after six months when the CEO is impatient.

Next time you write a job description, try putting a number next to each line you add: how many people are left after this one. If you can't write the number, leave the line out for now.

My suspicion is that the most expensive line is usually the one the author thinks is too obvious to question. In this example that's "Mandarin, to work directly with headquarters." Whether it's worth the price depends on whether headquarters will pay for an interpreter. That's a headquarters decision, and HR can't make it alone. Would headquarters rather pay for an interpreter, or keep waiting for one of the ten?

Sources (as of November 2026)

- [Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Foreign employment notification summary, end of October 2025 (January 30, 2026)](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_68794.html)
- [MHLW, same report, Appendix 3, Table 7: foreign workers by nationality and industry](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/11655000/001646131.pdf)
- [Statistics Bureau of Japan, Labour Force Survey (Basic Tabulation), 2025 annual average](https://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/sokuhou/nen/ft/pdf/gaiyou.pdf)
- [JILPT, Employed persons by occupation, from the Labour Force Survey 2025 annual average](https://www.jil.go.jp/kokunai/statistics/chart/pdf/25g0006.pdf)
- [Statistics Bureau of Japan, Labour Force Survey (Detailed Tabulation), 2025 annual average: job changers and people wishing to change jobs](https://www.stat.go.jp/info/mail/pdf/20260213_no1836.pdf)

---

Author

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

Launching in Japan, starting with people and systems. I write about building organizations, sales teams and technology organizations in Japan, in English, Japanese and Chinese.

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