--- title: Why Japan's Recruiter Fees Run 30 to 35% of Salary description: Japan caps recruiter fees near 7% of salary unless the agency files its own schedule. Filed schedules say 30 to 40%. The FY2024 average was ¥1.03m per hire. image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-11/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary-cover-en-2026-10-m.png --- [Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en) [Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en) [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en) [Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en) [日本語](https://nobusato.jp/ja/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary)[English](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary)[中文](https://nobusato.jp/zh/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary) Japan by the Numbers In this article 1. [What the government actually counts](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s1) 2. [Does Japanese law cap recruiter fees?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s2) 3. [Why is the average only ¥1.03 million?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s3) 4. [What the fee pays for](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s4) 5. [When is it worth paying?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s5) 1. [Home](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en) 2. [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) 3. [Japan by the Numbers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/japan-by-the-numbers) # Why Japan's Recruiter Fees Run 30 to 35% of Salary MHLW placement business reports, FY2024 [Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)8 min read Contents5 1. [What the government actually counts](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s1) 2. [Does Japanese law cap recruiter fees?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s2) 3. [Why is the average only ¥1.03 million?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s3) 4. [What the fee pays for](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s4) 5. [When is it worth paying?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-recruiter-fee-a-third-of-salary#s5) The 30 to 35% recruiter fee in Japan is not set by law, and no government statistic measures it. It is a price each agency files with the labor ministry. Without that filing, the legal cap works out to about 7% of salary. The ministry's own average across all placements is ¥1.03 million. The gap between those numbers explains most of what a foreign company needs to know before signing with an agency. ## What the government actually counts Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) collects totals, not fee rates. Every employment placement business files an annual report: job orders received, job seekers registered, placements made, fees earned. Nobody is asked what percentage of salary they charged on each deal. The latest preliminary results cover fiscal 2024 (April 2024 to March 2025) and were published on 31 March 2026. Fee-charging agencies made 888,993 "regular" placements and earned about ¥913.6 billion in fees on them. The ministry divides one by the other and reports about ¥1.03 million per placement, up 10.9% on the year before. Look at what sits inside that denominator. "Regular" means an open-ended contract or a fixed-term contract of four months or more. So it includes six-month contract workers, and it includes nurses, care workers and childcare staff placed through specialist agencies. Hires through job ads or a company's own careers page are not in this report at all. So ¥1.03 million is a blended average. It is not the going rate for your sales director. ## Does Japanese law cap recruiter fees? Only if the agency chooses the capped route. Article 32-3 of the Employment Security Act gives fee-charging agencies two options. The first is the capped fee. No filing is needed, and the ceiling is 11.0% of the wages paid to the placed worker (10.3% for businesses exempt from consumption tax). For an open-ended hire who stays past six months, the agency may take the larger of 11.0% of six months' wages, or 14.8% of six months' wages excluding bonuses and other irregular pay. These figures have applied since 1 October 2019, when consumption tax rose to 10%. Take the simplest case: ¥6 million a year, no bonus, permanent contract. Six months of pay is ¥3 million. 14.8% of that is ¥444,000, or 7.4% of annual salary. The second option is the filed fee. The agency submits a fee schedule to the Minister in advance and charges whatever the schedule says. The law sets no maximum rate. The Minister can order a change if the schedule is unclear, plainly unreasonable or discriminates against particular people. Mid-career agencies almost all take the second route. Their filed schedules are public on the ministry's Human Resources Services website. The schedules filed there list rates such as 30%, 35% and 40% of "theoretical annual income," and some are tiered, for example 35% below ¥10 million and 40% above it. That is where the number on your invoice comes from. Without a filing the legal cap is about 7% of salary; filed schedules say 30 to 40% Fee as a share of annual salary (%). Capped fee: worked example for a permanent hire on ¥6 million with no bonus (14.8% of six months' wages). Filed fee: four schedules published on MHLW's Human Resources Services website, based on theoretical annual income, viewed November 2026 **Capped fee**　no filing, legal ceiling - Legal cap¥6m worked example 7.4% **Filed fee**　charged as filed - Schedule A 30% - Schedule B 35% - Schedule C40% from ¥10m 35% - Schedule D 40% The third of salary is a filed price. You can read it, compare it and ask about it. Figure 1. Under MHLW's capped-fee rule, the maximum fee for a permanent hire on ¥6 million with no bonus is about 7.4% of salary (¥444,000), while four filed fee schedules published on the ministry's Human Resources Services website charge 30%, 35%, 35% (40% from ¥10 million) and 40% of theoretical annual income. ## Why is the average only ¥1.03 million? Because cheap placements pull it down. Run it backwards. If every placement were billed at 35%, ¥1.03 million would imply an average salary of about ¥2.94 million. Japan's National Tax Agency puts the average pay of regular full-time employees in 2024 at ¥5.45 million. The gap tells you the 888,993 placements include a lot of fixed-term contracts, lower-paid jobs and lower rates. The ministry also publishes average fees for healthcare and care occupations. For fiscal 2024, nationwide: doctors ¥1.078 million, nurses ¥725,000, childcare workers ¥668,000, care workers ¥597,000. These are high-volume segments, and they drag the blended figure down. If you are hiring a country manager or a senior engineer at ¥8 million or more, the average is close to useless as a benchmark. Quoting it in a negotiation will not get you far. ## What the fee pays for Each placement pays for the searches that went nowhere. The ministry's numbers show how many of those there are. In fiscal 2024, 30,561 fee-charging agency offices filed reports. Only 13,946 made at least one placement. The other 16,615, about 54%, placed nobody all year. Agencies are paid on success. The invoice goes out when the candidate starts, and everything before that day, sourcing, interviews, submissions, rejections, is unpaid work. Job orders tell the same story. Fee-charging agencies took orders for 16,810,164 regular positions in the year and made 888,993 regular placements, about 5.3%. The ratio is understated because the same opening is often listed with several agencies, and the ministry itself notes that job order counts include duplicates. Still, most orders an agency takes never turn into a fee for that agency. Then there is the refund. Refund terms are published on the same website. Published examples return 80% of the fee if the hire leaves within one month and 50% within three months, or 75%, 50% and 25% at 30, 60 and 90 days. Since January 2018 agencies must disclose whether they offer refunds and on what terms, and how many of their permanent placements left within six months for reasons other than dismissal. A refund scheme itself is not mandatory. The ministry says it is "desirable." Success-only billing plus a few months of refund risk is what the third of salary is built on. Think of it as insurance: no hire, no fee. ## When is it worth paying? When an empty seat costs you more per month than the fee costs you once. A sales lead who owns the pipeline, an engineer blocking a product launch: three months of vacancy in those seats usually costs more than ¥2 million. Paying an agency there is easy to justify. Paying a third of salary for every routine hire in a role you fill several times a year is not. Agencies place fewer than one in ten of Japan's job changers, as I showed in [How People in Japan Actually Find Jobs: Recruiters Are 9%](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-hiring-channels?hsLang=en). Before you sign, ask how "theoretical annual income" is defined. Whether it includes expected bonuses, fixed overtime pay and allowances can move the base by 10 or 20%, and the fee with it. Read the refund clause for both the periods and the cases: does it apply equally when the hire resigns and when you dismiss them? On the rate itself, agencies are bound to charge per their filed schedule, so read the schedule first. Some change the rate above a salary threshold. An exclusive mandate or several roles at once are reasonable grounds to open a conversation about terms. The fee is also only one part of what a hire costs. With social insurance and commuting allowances, the first year runs about 1.5 times salary, which I worked through in [What one hire in Japan really costs: 1.2x to 1.5x salary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/true-cost-of-hiring-in-japan?hsLang=en). The 30 to 35% gets repeated as an industry rule. It is a filed document. Documents can be read, and most foreign companies never ask to read this one before they sign. This article is general information, not legal advice. For fee caps, the filing and amendment of fee schedules and how refund clauses apply in a given case, check the Employment Security Act, its Enforcement Regulations and guidance from MHLW and the prefectural labour bureaus, and consult a licensed labor and social security attorney (sharoushi) or a lawyer where needed. Figures are as of November 2026. The ¥6 million calculation is an illustrative example. Sources (as of November 2026) - [MHLW, Employment Placement Business Reports, FY2024 preliminary results (31 March 2026)](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/11600000/001683019.pdf) - [MHLW, Revision of maximum placement fees (effective 1 October 2019)](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_06885.html) - [MHLW, Operating guidelines for employment placement businesses, Chapter 6: Fees](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/general/seido/anteikyoku/jukyu/syoukai/dl/06.pdf) - [MHLW Human Resources Services website, disclosure duties under the 2017 Employment Security Act amendment](https://jinzai.hellowork.mhlw.go.jp/icb_data/StaticContents/29%E5%AE%89%E5%AE%9A%E6%B3%95%E6%94%B9%E6%AD%A3%EF%BC%88%E8%81%B7%E6%A5%AD%E7%B4%B9%E4%BB%8B%E4%BA%8B%E6%A5%AD%E8%80%85%EF%BC%89.pdf) - [MHLW, Average placement fees by occupation and region (FY2024)](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/11600000/001754261.pdf) - [National Tax Agency, Statistical Survey of Actual Status for Salary in the Private Sector, 2024](https://www.nta.go.jp/publication/statistics/kokuzeicho/minkan/gaiyou/2024.htm) - Filed fee schedules and refund terms published by individual agencies on the Human Resources Services website (viewed November 2026) --- 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. [Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)[Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en) ## Read next 1. 01[SMEs are 99% of Japanese companies. Decide who you're selling to first](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/smes-are-99-percent-who-do-you-sell-to?hsLang=en)6 min Japan has 10,000 large companies and 2.85 million micro ones. The layer you sell to decides the channel. Pick the ... 2. 02[The average company president is over sixty. What that means if you're selling](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/presidents-average-age-sixty?hsLang=en)5 min Japan's presidents average 60.8 and half of companies have no successor. 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