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Japan’s 2027 Foreign Worker Routes: Caps, Tests, Transfers

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Japan’s Employment for Skill Development (ESD) program is scheduled to start on 1 April 2027, replacing the Technical Intern Training Program with a three-year route into the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) visa. The government announced on 23 January 2026 that it will accept up to 1,231,900 foreign workers through the end of fiscal 2028, which ends in March 2029. Of those places, 426,200 are for ESD across 17 fields and 805,700 for SSW type 1 across 19 fields.

For a worker, the practical differences from the old trainee system are an entry-level Japanese requirement, a defined path to SSW, and a limited right to change employer. The old program generally barred job changes. It also held about 449,400 trainees at the end of June 2025, a figure an Immigration Services Agency official said the successor program is expected to undercut.

Three years of ESD, two language tests, then SSW type 1

The Immigration Services Agency (ISA) describes ESD as a plan of up to three years, accredited by a licensed organization, that trains a worker to the SSW type 1 level. In its July 2026 outline, entry requirements vary by field but generally sit between A1 and A2.1 on the Japanese proficiency scale. Many fields then require A2.1 after one year and A2.2 by the end. An earlier ISA outline of the 2024 law gives the entry floor as A1, equivalent to JLPT N5, plus a basic trade skill test and a field-specific Japanese test.

The sequence, as the agency sets it out, runs in this order:

  1. Before starting work: Japanese at A1 or above (or equivalent classes), the basic trade skill test, and a field-specific Japanese test.
  2. During ESD: a training term of up to three years, with Japanese rising to the field’s level by the end.
  3. Moving to SSW type 1: the SSW type 1 evaluation test (or a grade 3 trade skill test) and Japanese at A2 or above, roughly JLPT N4. A worker who fails can stay up to one additional year to retake.
  4. Moving to SSW type 2: the type 2 evaluation test and B1 Japanese, roughly N3. Type 1 allows five years; type 2 has no upper limit on extensions.

SSW is the larger and older of the two channels. The agency counted a record 390,296 SSW holders at the end of 2025, with type 2 holders at 7,955, about 2.6 times the level six months earlier. The Jiji Press report attributes the jump to type 1 workers nearing their five-year limit and passing the type 2 exams. Type 2 is not open in every sector; nursing care is among those excluded.

Switching employers: one to two years first, five conditions after

ESD allows what the trainee program generally did not: moving to a different employer in the same field. The ISA outline says some fields restrict voluntary changes for one or two years, and that the exam needed to move is set at the skill level expected after one year of ESD. A March 2026 analysis by Naoya Yokota of the Institute for Social Vision Design lists five conditions that must all be met: the minimum period at the first employer, a basic skills exam, JLPT N5 or above, a certified destination employer, and placement through the public employment service, Hello Work.

Yokota, whose institute is a private organization rather than a government body, argues the structure still discourages moves. His reasoning is that supervising organizations earn management fees from host companies, which gives them a reason not to help workers leave. That is an argument about incentives, not an observed outcome, since the program has not started. The government has not published any transfer statistics.

Where the 1,231,900 places go, sector by sector

Caps are set by field. Each equals the estimated labor shortage after allowing for productivity gains and domestic hiring, and acceptance in a field stops once its cap is reached. The seven figures below come from draft operational guidelines reported in December 2025, so they may have changed.

Field Reported cap Note
Industrial product manufacturing 319,200 Largest
Construction 199,500
Food and beverage manufacturing 194,900
Nursing care 167,000
Logistics warehousing 18,300 Added field
Linen supply 7,700 Added field
Resource recycling 4,500 Added field

These seven figures add up to 911,100, more than ESD’s 426,200, so they cannot be ESD-only numbers. The report does not say how each cap divides between ESD and SSW type 1, and the ISA’s July 2026 outline gives no field-by-field numbers at all. Motor transport and aviation are SSW fields but not ESD fields.

A cap can close a field in practice. The restaurant sector had about 46,000 SSW type 1 workers at the end of February 2026 against a ceiling of 50,000, and the same report says new type 1 certification there would be suspended from 13 April 2026.

A fee cap that critics read as a permission

Foreign workers will be accepted in principle only from countries that have signed a memorandum of cooperation with Japan, and the government says these will include measures to keep fees paid to sending organizations from being unduly high. The rule itself is in Article 21 of a 2025 ordinance, which lets sending organizations collect up to two months of the worker’s expected salary. Shiro Ikawa, a labor law professor at Chuo University, wrote in July 2026 that this cap implies fees under the ceiling are lawful, which conflicts with Japan’s general ban on fee-based job placement.

His worked example: a monthly salary of 250,000 yen and a fee of 500,000 yen. He notes the government’s own model case had fees financed by loans repaid over 1.5 years, which raises debt bondage concerns. Ikawa proposes that authorities read the cap only as a threshold for extra sanctions, with fees below it still illegal in principle. The government has not adopted that reading in anything reviewed here.

Outside the legal literature, a timeline kept by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre lists a Japan Federation of Bar Associations statement in March 2024, a report from UN experts acknowledging concerns about ESD in November 2025, and a May 2026 group statement calling the government’s response insufficient. The timeline’s entries are headlines only, so the content of each objection is not summarized here.

Details Japan has not yet published for April 2027

Several rules that decide how ESD works in practice are undefined in the sources reviewed. A May 2026 law firm summary notes that “same field” for transfers is not defined, the Japanese threshold for transfers is not given as a number, and there is no procedure for existing trainees. The same summary reports that serious violations by employers can lead to a bar on admitting new foreign workers for three to five years; that sanction is secondary-sourced and was not found in the ISA documents.

Sources also disagree on the field count. One guide describes 16 sectors, while the ISA outline says 17 of the 19 SSW fields are ESD fields as of July 2026. The agency’s figure is used here.

The ISA says each field’s acceptance ceiling will be set in field-specific operation policies, and the July 2026 outline does not yet give those numbers. Until they are published, ahead of the 1 April 2027 start, the only ESD figure available is the total of 426,200 places through March 2029.

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