TOKYO: The spread of the novel coronavirus is overshadowing the employment of foreigners in Japan.

More and more non-Japanese people are losing their jobs, with the pandemic having dealt a blow to economic activities in Japan.

Meanwhile, labor shortages are becoming more acute in the elderly care and agriculture sectors as foreigners with certain skills who have acquired the new resident status introduced in Japan in April 2019 have been unable to come to the country due to entry restrictions the Japanese government has put into place in response to the epidemic.

In 2019, a total of some 190,000 people came to Japan from abroad as technical trainees. A senior official of the Immigration Services Agency said, "Almost no new foreign workers are visiting Japan at present."

An increasing number of foreign technical trainees, mainly at manufacturers, have been fired as the firms scaled back their operations amid the virus crisis, leaving them struggling to find new jobs.

Japanese companies are required to find new workplaces in the same job category for foreign employees they dismiss for reasons such as deteriorating earnings. But this is now very difficult due to the country's increasingly tough economic situation caused by the epidemic.

Against this background, the agency has decided to allow dismissed foreign workers to find new jobs in different categories, to support sectors hit hard by labor shortages. Specifically, it is receiving job applications from such foreigners and offering information about them to businesses through local governments and industry organizations.

The agency also plans to apply this system to foreign students whose informal job offers have been canceled.

But it remains to be seen to what extent the system, which started on April 20, will prove effective in helping foreigners find jobs in Japan.

If the virus continues to spread, the number of foreigners losing their jobs will increase, making it even harder to find a fundamental solution to the problem, pundits said.

JIJI Press