Big Japanese Firms Plan to Hire More Foreign Workers

Plans for overseas expansion are prompting 23% of Japan’s top 122 companies to begin hiring more foreigners beginning in 2012, according to a survey conducted in November and December by Mainichi Daily. Looking at a 10-year time span, 50.8% of those firms plan to hire more foreign workers.

Survey respondents included Fast Retailing Co., Aeon Co., Dai Nippon Printing Co., and Hitachi Ltd, among other leading Japanese firms.

Plans to hire more foreign employees were reported mainly by companies that hope to expand overseas operations.

Fast Retailing Co., which owns the Uniglo global fast fashion chain, stated “more overseas shops” as the main reason for hiring more foreign workers. Retail giant Aeon Co. said it would hire workers in other Asian countries to execute plans to expand on the continent.

No firms reported plans to decrease foreign workers while 36.9% expect their foreign employee numbers to be unchanged.

Another likely reason for hiring more foreign workers is to shift more operations overseas to cut costs. Nearly 90% of firms said a rising yen is their biggest worry.

None of the respondents felt economic conditions had “improved”. Only 27.9% felt the economy is gradually improving, far fewer than last year when 52.1% saw economic improvement.

Firms that feel economic conditions are “deteriorating” rose to 17.2% compared with only 10.9% last year. The negative outlook was blamed on the European debt crisis, high yen and the impact of Thai flooding.

But a majority of firms (54.1%) said economic conditions remained unchanged, up from 37% in a survey conducted last July and August.

Nearly half the firms (48.4%) see the economy as staying unchanged for the near future, while 35.2% expect it to improve.

Over a quarter of firms see more mid-career recruitment as the biggest change likely to occur in the next ten years while about 16% foresee the big change to be the use of “merit-based salaries”.