Japan’s government has proposed letting foreign cooks resume working in meal services at medical, welfare and school facilities by reclassifying that work into a different visa-sector category, while also raising the admission cap for nursing-care workers and holding the nationwide foreign-worker cap at about 1.23 million through fiscal 2028.
What Happened
Japan’s government presented a plan to the 15th expert panel on the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) and Employment for Skill Development systems, convened by the Immigration Services Agency (ISA) at the Ministry of Justice on Monday, to let foreign meal-service cooks at medical and welfare facilities and schools resume working under the SSW program — not by reopening the visa-sector category that currently covers that work, but by reclassifying it into a different category that still has room, according to the ISA’s own meeting agenda and reporting by the Asahi Shimbun, the Japan Times and the Mainichi Shimbun.
New SSW Type 1 admissions in the food-service category, which covers meal preparation at hospitals, nursing-care facilities and schools, were suspended in April after the number of status holders neared the category’s cap of 50,000, the Japan Times reported. Since meal-service work mainly involves food preparation and cooking rather than customer interaction, the government plans to move medical- and welfare-facility meal service into the food-and-beverage-manufacturing category instead, which has a cap of 133,500 and was about 76% full as of the end of July, Japan Times and Asahi Shimbun reported; Japan’s agriculture ministry does not expect the move to meaningfully affect that category. The ISA’s agenda frames this as a formal proposal on “accepting medical/welfare-facility meal-service work under the food-and-beverage-manufacturing sector category.”
Separately, the government plans to raise the SSW Type 1 cap for the nursing-care sector by 20,000, to 146,900, while holding the combined sector limit — Type 1 plus the new Employment for Skill Development status — at 160,700, Japan Times and Asahi Shimbun reported. Asahi reported the increase would be funded by reassigning 20,000 of the 33,800 slots originally set aside for the incoming Employment for Skill Development program in nursing care into the Type 1 cap instead, matching the ISA agenda’s framing of this item as a change to “how expected admission numbers are divided” between the two residency statuses in that sector.
The government plans to hold the overall cap — combining SSW Type 1 admissions across 19 sectors with the Employment for Skill Development program — at 1,231,900 through the end of fiscal 2028, made up of 825,400 Type 1 workers and 406,500 workers under the Employment for Skill Development program, which is due to launch next April in place of the former Technical Intern Training Program, the Japan Times reported. The Asahi Shimbun separately cited rounded figures for the same totals — about 810,000 Type 1 workers and about 420,000 training-program workers, for a combined “about 1.23 million.”
The proposal was presented to the expert panel on Oct. 19; the government aims for Cabinet approval in December and intends for the changes to take effect next April, Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
Who It Affects
Businesses that run meal services at hospitals, nursing-care facilities and schools, and the foreign nationals who work or want to work in those kitchens under SSW status, are the most directly affected. The Mainichi Shimbun reported that an August survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of 38 companies contracted to prepare meals at medical and welfare facilities found that, of the 34 that responded, all reported vacancies, 40% described having “many vacancies,” and some said they were considering withdrawing from the business; by May, the ratio of job openings to applicants for meal-service cooks, excluding school lunches, had risen to 7.37.
Employers and foreign workers in the nursing-care sector are affected by the planned cap increase, and businesses already operating in the food-and-beverage-manufacturing category are affected because that category’s existing, unchanged cap will now also have to absorb the reclassified meal-service admissions.
The plan does not reopen new admissions to the food-service category itself; employers outside medical, welfare and school meal services that fall under that category remain subject to the suspension in place since April, pending any separate decision.
Background So Far
The SSW program was created in 2019 to accept foreign workers in sectors facing severe labor shortages, with sector-by-sector admission caps split between Type 1 status (certain knowledge and experience) and Type 2 status (advanced skills), the Asahi Shimbun reported. The food-service category’s Type 1 cap of 50,000 was the first to trigger a suspension of new admissions, in April, after years of the SSW program’s intake caps being set and periodically revised sector by sector.
At a September meeting of the same expert panel, some members argued for a more lasting fix — raising the food-and-beverage-manufacturing cap itself based on actual labor need — rather than only reassigning spare capacity from elsewhere into it, the Mainichi Shimbun reported, since that category is itself approaching its own limit.
As of the end of July, about 80,000 foreign caregivers held Type 1 status in the nursing-care sector, about 64% of the cap in place at the time, the Asahi Shimbun reported — the basis cited for the planned 20,000-slot increase.
Outlook
The Asahi Shimbun reported that the proposed changes were presented to the expert panel on Oct. 19 and that, “pending Cabinet approval in December, the new measures are expected to go into effect in April.” The Japan Times reported the government “plans to keep the upper limit for foreign nationals in all categories at 1,231,900 until the end of fiscal 2028.” The Mainichi Shimbun reported the government “plans to adopt the revised policy by Cabinet decision by the end of the year and expects admissions to resume next April,” while noting that some expert-panel members have separately called for “increasing the expected number of admissions, or the cap, based on actual conditions” in the food-and-beverage-manufacturing category itself.
References
Immigration Services Agency of Japan – 15th Expert Panel Meeting on the Specified Skilled Worker and Employment for Skill Development Systems / The Japan Times – Japan to Restart Accepting Foreign Workers for Meal Services at Some Facilities / The Asahi Shimbun – Japan to Reopen Doors to Foreign Workers in Public Meal Services / The Mainichi – Japan to Reopen Some Foreign Worker Admissions in Food Prep After Survey Showed Shortage
