Summary of Effective Job-Opening-to-Applicant Ratio and Digest Report on Employment Trends for Q2

Robert Walters Japan (Head Office: Shibuya, Tokyo. Managing Director: David Swan) summarize data announced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare for each quarter, and release this data alongside our views.

The effective job-opening-to-applicant ratio released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on 29 July was 1.37, a 0.01 point rise when compared to the previous month. The average ratio for the three-month period from April to June was 1.36..In April, the effective job-opening-to-applicant ratio by place of work* exceeded 1.0 for all prefectures for the first time since the calculation of the job-opening-to-application ratio commenced. *Place of work: This does not refer to the location of the company, but rather, to the actual place of work for the employee.

With the tight labour conditions amidst a continuing labour shortage in Q2 of 2016, demand was prominent in areas such as the accommodation industry, food and beverage service industry (18.0% increase), construction industry (7.4% increase) and the medical and welfare industry (7.3% increase). Companies that encountered difficulties in hiring fresh graduates have made the shift toward recruiting currently unemployed recent graduates with work experience, as well as experienced “ready-made” mid- to senior-level recruits. This shift is believed to have helped  spur demand for human resources in the job-movers’ market. The effective job-opening-to-applicant ratio for career jobs has also continued to rise (0.88), and demand for human resources for career jobs in professional and technical occupations in particular is on a growing trend.

Among the job categories, there is also increasing demand for professional and technical positions including construction/civil/surveying engineers (A ratio of 3.96), and information processing/communications engineers (2.29) IT specialists are required across a broad spectrum of industries, and personnel requests received by Robert Walters Japan reflect growing demand for experienced security and data specialists, as well as web engineers and digital marketing personnel.  

The effective job-opening-to-applicant ratio has also remained high for sales jobs. The service sector is experiencing a continued labour shortage for jobs such as hospitality/wait staff (3.43). While orders have continued to pour in from the construction industry based on Olympics-related demand in anticipation of the 2020 Olympics, the labour shortage problem is worsening. The job-opening-to-applicant ratio remains high across all job categories in the construction and mining sectors, including construction work for building frames (6.85).

On the other hand, overall demand has remained low for administrative jobs such as general administration (0.28) and accounting-related administration (0.63). This is because demand for such personnel is on the decline amidst the growing trend of substituting human labour with machinery and systems for monotonous and simple tasks.