The demographic crisis is superimposed on the talent deficit, and the Japanese government has joined the global "robbery" war

A war for talent is quietly emerging around the world. The latest to join the fray is Japan.

The Japan Immigration Agency announced that from April 4, the newly established "Special Advanced Human Resources System" for foreigners will be officially implemented. According to Japanese media reports, the most attractive thing about this system is that as long as certain conditions are met, it only takes 21 year to obtain permanent residence in Japan.

According to the latest statistics released by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on April 4, the total population of Japan, excluding foreigners living in Japan, was 12 million, down 2022,10 from the previous year and the largest decline since 1. In terms of age group, the labor force population aged 1 to 22 was 75.1950 million, accounting for 15.64%, the same as the record low set last year.

Former Japanese Diet member Masa Koike told First Finance and Economics that the shortage of labor is serious in various industries in Japan; Japan also lags behind other countries in the global competition for high-level talent.

In the OECD's 2023 Talent Introduction Index, Japan ranks 22nd; In the Swiss Business School IMD's "World Talent Ranking 2022", Japan only ranks 41st, lower than Europe and the United States, and also lower than South Korea and China.

In 2022, Japan's trade deficit reached $1600 billion, the highest since 1979 with comparable data. At the same time, accelerated population shrinkage is accompanied by a "talent deficit".

"Although the pandemic has restricted the movement of people, even without the epidemic, the outflow of high-income earners due to taxes, social security, etc., as well as high-level talents who want higher wages, will increase." Koike said, "In Japan today, excellent IT engineers and technicians, and even sushi craftsmen, are being poached by countries that offer better treatment overseas. ”

Koike believes that it was the dilemma of insufficient manpower in Japan, the intensification of international competition for talent, the loss of overseas talent, and other internal and external crises that prompted the Japanese government's final decision to join the global "grabbing of talent" war.

Japan's New Talent Policy is in line with international benchmarking

Previously, the conditions for obtaining a "high-talent visa" in Japan were quite complicated. For example, the system scores applicants' academic qualifications, work experience, annual income, and other items, and if they exceed a certain score, they will be granted the qualification of "Highly Specialized Job No. 5" for 1 years, and after 3 years, they can be converted to the Advanced Talent No. 2 visa (different from the permanent residence visa).

This time, in order to speed up the attraction of talents, the Japanese government has released two big moves: the first trick is to introduce a "special highly specialized" visa for foreign business operators and foreign technical or research talents, so that eligible applicants can bypass the original complicated point system and go to Japan for one year to directly obtain permanent residence in Japan; The second measure is to target young people who have graduated from the world's top 1 universities and issue them visas that can stay for two years to facilitate their job search.

Specifically, for foreign business operators, to apply for a "special highly specialized" visa, they need to have more than 5 years of business and management experience, and their annual income reaches more than 4000 million yen (about 17,10 yuan per month); For foreign technical or research personnel, they need more than 2000 years of experience or a master's degree before being hired by a Japanese company, and their annual income after employment reaches more than 102 million yen (about <>.<> million yuan).

An agent told First Finance and Economics that as far as talents applying for "particularly highly specialized positions" are concerned, "in fact, it simplifies the soft requirements in the point table and directly uses 'salary' to determine the victory." However, the threshold of annual income of 2000 million ~ 4000 million yen is not low. Japanese companies pay attention to the sequence of annual achievements, and the annual income of the top leaders of general enterprises is also around 2000 million yen. ”

As for the new policy for international students, the new regulations of the Japanese government show that for students who graduate from the top 100 universities ranked by the world's three authoritative universities and have a graduation time of less than 5 years, a "specific activity visa" will be issued, allowing them to stay in Japan for up to 2 years to find a job in order to attract them to eventually stay in Japan.

The above-mentioned intermediaries believe that this adjustment measure is in line with international standards. In Europe, at least 10 countries have previously introduced work visas for graduates to study. For example, the UK has a 2-year PSW visa, which allows international students to stay in the UK to find work or conduct business activities within 2 years after graduation. In the Netherlands, there is also a "one-year job search scheme", which aims to provide non-EU graduates from the Netherlands with a one-year residence permit, and holders can work at will without applying for a separate work permit.

Globally, after the pandemic, as international mobility gradually resumed, countries are hungry for talent and see talent as a driving force for economic recovery.

Singapore, one of the international financial centres and wealth management centres, doubled its investment threshold for family office projects to S$4 million in April last year. At the end of August last year, Singapore's Ministry of Manpower announced the launch of the "Top Professional Pass", which will start accepting applications this year. Canada, which is also heavily dependent on immigration, has also announced its 1000-8 Immigration Level Plan. According to the plan, Canada's immigration target quota in the next three years will reach a record high, totaling 2023.2025 million, focusing on the introduction of economic immigrants.

In the UK, although investment immigration is a thing of the past, in late May 2022, the UK announced the launch of the High Potential Talent Visa Program (HPI), which provides a 5~50-year work visa for graduates of the world's top 2 universities who meet the requirements, while bringing their spouse and unmarried children under the age of 3 to live and live in the UK. According to USCIS estimates, in fiscal 18, the US employment-based immigration green card will undertake the remaining 2023,6 quotas in the previous fiscal year, and the total immigration quota will reach 20,<>.

How is Japan's labor shortage improving?

Over the years, how to alleviate the labor shortage in the context of an aging population has become a problem for successive Japanese governments. In 2018, the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet formally passed amendments such as the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act on the relaxation of labor visas for foreign workers, which is seen as an important step towards alleviating labor shortages. The Act came into force on April 4 of the following year. At that time, the Japanese government planned to bring in 1,5 foreign workers in 14 industries within five years to solve the labor shortage.

For more than four years, despite the impact of the pandemic, data previously released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as of the end of October 4 showed that the number of foreign workers working in Japan was about 2022,10,182, an increase of 27,9 over the previous year.

Koike told First Finance and Economics that although the working-age population has decreased, and the labor shortage has improved slightly after the employment rate of women and the elderly has increased, the male labor force population with a high employment rate has continued to decrease. "In occupations where men work mostly full-time, the labor shortage has not improved because women and the elderly cannot make up for it. For example, in the construction industry, medical welfare and other fields, the shortage of manpower has become a serious problem. "In addition, with the lifting of epidemic restrictions, economic activities and personnel movement in Japan have gradually returned to normal, and there are also problems of insufficient manpower in tourism, catering, logistics, wholesale, retail, education, etc." ”

Koike believes that in addition to efforts to increase the employment rate of women and the elderly in Japan, it is necessary to respond in a variety of ways, such as improving work styles and the use of IT technology to increase productivity, entrusting overseas companies and human resources, and accepting more foreign human resources.

"In particular, there is a lot of discussion in Japan about bringing in human resources from abroad." "However, for foreigners, Japanese society has a natural language barrier. In the workplace environment, Japan's unique personnel and salary systems, such as seniority sequences and salary standards, differ from global standards. ”

Therefore, Koike believes that in addition to recruiting overseas human resources, it is necessary to promote a workplace environment in which English works, introduce wages commensurate with the content of work, and set high remuneration for talented people even if they are young, such as clarifying the criteria for promotion and salary increases to improve the transparency of treatment, promote the desire of workers to grow, and promote the stability of human resources. In addition, inefficient long working hours must be corrected.

"More importantly, we must also keep up with the supporting support for families of foreign talents, such as language teaching for foreign children and the integration of spouses into Japanese society." Koike said. According to a recent survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, as of May 2022, 5, there are still 1,8183 school-age foreign students in Japan who are not enrolled in elementary and junior high schools in Japan due to language, living habits and other issues. Koike believes that after the promulgation of the new policy, Japan's central government, local governments and companies should work together to create a favorable environment suitable for retaining talent.

Yicai