How People in Japan Actually Find Jobs: Recruiters Are 9%

Recruiters place fewer than one in ten of the people who change jobs in Japan. Every year the labor ministry asks people who just started a new job how they got it. In 2025, 9.3% of job changers came through a private employment agency. The other nine in ten came through job ads, personal connections and the public employment office, Hello Work. Foreign companies that budget for hiring as one line called "agency fees" are buying from a small corner of the market.

Who is counted

Regular employees who joined an establishment with five or more regular employees during calendar 2025. The source is the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Survey on Employment Trends (雇用動向調査). The 2025 annual results came out on 31 August 2026. The ministry sampled 14,840 establishments, with a 60.9% response rate, and the entry-route question is answered by the new hire personally on an entrant form. 57,896 entrant forms were tabulated and scaled up to an estimated 7.53 million hires nationwide.

There are two denominators. All hires, 7.53 million, include new graduates and people who had not worked for over a year. Job changers, defined as hires who were employed at some point in the twelve months before joining, number 5.06 million. For a question about how people change jobs, the second group is the right one, and it is the one I use below.

Respondents can pick only one route. Someone who used several has to choose which one to name. "Advertising" includes job magazines and online job boards. "Connections" (縁故) includes introductions by friends and acquaintances. Secondment and return from secondment are intra-group transfers. "Other" is not broken down further. Part-time and fixed-term workers count as hires too.

How do job changers in Japan find their next employer?

Mostly through ads and people they know. Of the 5.06 million job changers in 2025, 31.9% came through advertising, 24.0% through connections, 16.2% through Hello Work including its online service, 13.6% through "other", 9.3% through private employment agencies, 3.9% through secondment or return from secondment, and 1.2% through schools.

You might suspect part-timers drag the agency share down. So take only regular workers on open-ended contracts, the closest the survey gets to "seishain": 2.26 million job changers. Agencies rise to 14.1%. Advertising is 26.9%, connections 22.7%, Hello Work 15.4%, other 12.8%, secondment and return 6.3%. Even in the permanent-job market, agencies handle about one hire in seven.

One job changer in ten comes through an agency, and the share falls with company size

Entry routes of 5.06 million job changers in 2025 (%), and the private agency share of job changers by company size (%). MHLW Survey on Employment Trends 2025, self-reported by new hires, establishments with 5+ regular employees

Job changers by entry route　all company sizes

• Advertisingincl. online job boards
  31.9%
• Connectionsincl. friends, acquaintances
  24.0%
• Hello Workincl. online service
  16.2%
• Other
  13.6%
• Private agencyrecruiters
  9.3%
• Secondment, return
  3.9%

Private agency share　by company size

• 1,000+ employees
  11.8%
• 300 to 999
  12.1%
• 100 to 299
  10.3%
• 30 to 99
  7.4%
• 5 to 29
  3.3%

Recruiters see a corner of the market. Mix channels by role, and don't park the whole budget on one line.

Smaller companies hire through people and Hello Work

At establishments with 5 to 29 employees, 3.3% of job changers came through an agency. It is 7.4% at 30 to 99, 10.3% at 100 to 299, 12.1% at 300 to 999 and 11.8% at 1,000 or more.

What do small companies use instead? Connections and Hello Work. At 5 to 29 employees, connections account for 38.6% of job changers, Hello Work 18.7%, advertising 22.5%. At 1,000 or more, connections fall to 18.4% and advertising rises to 38.1%. How a company hires is largely set by how big it is.

Most foreign subsidiaries in Japan sit in the smallest band of this table. The Japanese companies of the same size competing for the same people are hiring through the owner's and the staff's acquaintances, through Hello Work, which is free, and through job ads. The subsidiary is paying an agency 30 to 35% of annual salary. Put that next to the numbers in What one hire in Japan really costs and the same person costs you several times what it costs your competitor. The market does not give a discount for being foreign.

By occupation, half of management hires never reach the open market

The differences get sharper by occupation. Again, regular workers on open-ended contracts, job changers only.

Managerial jobs: connections 28.1%, secondment 21.2%, return from secondment 4.6%. Together 53.9%. Private agencies 18.1%, advertising 12.6%, Hello Work 7.4%. More than half of managerial moves happen through someone the company knows or within a corporate group. They are never posted.

Clerical jobs: advertising 27.9%, agencies 19.9%, Hello Work 15.4%, connections 15.0%. This is the occupation where agencies have their largest share, and it is one in five.

Professional and technical jobs, which is where engineers sit: advertising 24.1%, connections 20.7%, agencies 16.7%, other 15.9%, Hello Work 12.1%. Sales: advertising 30.3%, connections 25.0%, agencies 18.0%. Service jobs: advertising 32.3%, connections 27.1%, agencies 8.3%. Production: advertising and Hello Work 26.7% each, agencies 6.6%.

In one line: the closer to the front line, the more ads and Hello Work; the higher up, the more connections; agencies matter most in the middle, for clerical, sales and professional roles, and even there they are around a fifth.

Agencies grew tenfold in 25 years and still hold under a tenth

The recruiting industry in Japan has grown a lot. In 2000, 54,000 people were hired through private agencies, 0.9% of all hires. In 2025 it was 581,000, or 7.7%. More than ten times over 25 years.

Over the same period Hello Work fell from 21.5% to 15.3%, counting its online service; the office alone is 12.2%. Advertising barely moved: 32.3% in 2000, 32.3% in 2025. Connections slipped from 26.7% to 21.4% and remain the second-largest route.

So agencies have mostly been eating Hello Work's share. After 25 years of eating, they are still under a tenth. I don't expect that structure to change in a few years.

What a hiring company should change

Build the channel mix by level of role, and build it the way Japanese companies do.

For front-line and service roles, job boards and your own careers page do most of the work; Hello Work is free, so list there too. For clerical, sales and professional roles, run ads and agencies in parallel, and give the agencies the one in five you genuinely cannot find. For management, start with people you know: customers, partners, advisors, the Japanese staff already on payroll. Then let an agency fill the gaps. Japanese companies pay referral bonuses for a reason. Connections were the second-largest route before anyone called it a program.

Keep the agency line in the budget. Just don't let it be the only line. For a clerical role at 6 million yen, a 35% fee is 2.1 million. Two or three positions out of ten are worth that. Move the rest to other routes and you free enough money to fund a proper careers page, job board listings and referral bonuses together.

A word on LinkedIn. The survey has no line for it. A job a company posts there counts as advertising; a direct approach is "other" or "connections", depending on how the respondent reads it. I wrote about its actual reach in Is LinkedIn Useful in Japan?. It is not a primary channel yet.

The survey has blind spots. "Other" is 13.6%, and I suspect a good part of it is direct applications on company sites and scouts from direct-recruiting platforms, but the survey does not split it and I won't guess. It also records one route per person. Someone registered with an agency who ends up applying through an ad probably gets counted under advertising, so 9.3% likely understates what agencies do along the way. Not by enough to double it. When I draw a talent map, I keep this channel breakdown next to it. Find out where the people you want actually move, then decide where the money goes.

How to split work between an in-house team and agencies, role by role, is in In-House Recruiters or Agencies in Japan? Split by Role.

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