Skill Corridors is Migrant Times’ editorial series tracing how labour moves across Asia and the Pacific, from training centres and recruitment agencies to employers abroad. Each instalment breaks down the systems, incentives, and policies shaping today’s migration pipelines. 

JAKARTA - For years, Japan spread its recruitment across Asia, drawing from China’s inland provinces, Vietnam’s industrial towns, and later Myanmar’s villages. 

But as wages rose, borders tightened, and young workers found new destinations, the pipeline narrowed. 

Today, supervising organizations in Japan answer daily calls from sending agencies, yet one fact keeps resurfacing: most of the workers who actually arrive these days are Indonesian. 

“Indonesia is the main source now,” a supervisor in Nagano says plainly, adding that there’s nowhere else big enough or open enough left — at least for now.

Other countries dried up on Japan

The supervisor, who shall remain nameless, explains how Indonesia became Japan’s primary source in finding capable migrant workers, not because the demand for Indonesians is high, but because other countries dried up. 

The pattern is easy to trace. “At first, it was all China,” he says. “For the first ten years or so, we continued to accept trainees from China.” 

Then the stack thins out. “Eventually it became difficult to gather enough people.” Vietnam briefly filled the gap before following the same path, its workers drawn to higher wages elsewhere. Another pile ends abruptly at Myanmar as the country’s security situation worsened. The supervisor taps the final page. “Since January of this year, men can’t get exit permits.”

Japan now hosts around 2.3 million foreign workers, with roughly 470,725 trainees under the Technical Intern Training Program, while in the newer SSW Type 1 scheme Vietnam supplies nearly half of all workers (~47% or 133,300) and Indonesia accounts for about one in five (~19% or 53,900).

What’s left on the desk is one folder: Indonesia. Not because Japan set out to rely on it, he explains, but because the alternatives vanished one by one. 

Malaysia was never a contender, its population too small to supply workers at scale. Myanmar closed. Vietnam shrank. China’s pipeline collapsed entirely. Indonesia is the last major sending country still open, with a large population and few outbound restrictions. In his words, it “stands out” simply because it can still move.

Japan needs Indonesia’s scale, Indonesia needs Japan’s attractive salary

Indonesia has some 290 million people. This means the pool for Japan is bigger than any other Southeast Asian country.

For someone who has watched the region shift for decades, the numbers are telling: Indonesia has 290 million people, Vietnam has 90 million, and Myanmar sits at 62 million. Those figures alone, he says, explain a large part of the current reality. Indonesia is the largest available labor pool in Japan without major political barriers, unlike Myanmar, for example. 

The supervisor also points out that Japan’s pull has always been tied to wage differences, and those differences have narrowed everywhere except Indonesia. 

He remembers when China dominated the system, back when a lot of Chinese nationals would go to Japan to get 20× China’s minimum wage.

“At first, Chinese trainees earned 700 or 750 yuan,” he says. “Back then their wages were so low that coming to Japan meant earning twenty times more.” Today that gap has vanished. “Now they earn 5,000 to 6,000 yuan,” he explains, meaning a job in Japan offers only about 1.5 times the income. “So it’s natural that fewer Chinese people want to come.” 

These figures align with broader wage growth across China. In the mid-2000s, many provincial minimum wages sat between 600 and 800 yuan, close to what the supervisor described. Today, minimum wages in major cities exceed 2,000 yuan, and manufacturing workers typically earn 5,000–6,000 yuan with overtime. It narrows Japan’s wage advantage.

Vietnam followed the same pattern as its economy grew, shrinking the incentive that once drove workers toward Japan.

The average Indonesian worker brings home roughly IDR 3 million a month. It’s enough to get by, but not enough to move up. When translated into yen, the number shrinks even further, landing at around ¥28,000 to ¥29,000. That’s barely a week’s pay for an entry-level worker in Japan.

Japan sits on the other end of that divide. The median monthly wage there hovers around ¥310,000, which, when converted back into rupiah, becomes an almost surreal figure: more than IDR 33 million. Even after rent, insurance, and food, the possibility of sending home a meaningful part of their paychecks remains real. 

How employers in Japan perceive Indonesian workers

But Japan’s attraction isn’t only economic. Employers also shared their perceptions of how Indonesian workers behave once in Japan. 

In Nagano, the staff at the supervising organization talk about Indonesian workers with a kind of quiet respect. What stands out to them isn’t just language ability or technical skill, but temperament. It’s a sense of grounding they often attribute to religious upbringing.

“Indonesians tend not to be extremely strict about Islamic rules,” he says, “but having a clear religion gives them strong moral discipline.” 

The Nagano supervisor also notes that workers from some other nationalities have, in his experience, faced challenges with punctuality or settling into structured routines. 

“Some struggle with responsibility, punctuality, or following rules,” he says. 

The Japanese employer sitting beside him agrees without hesitation. “Oh, absolutely. Very strongly,” he adds. “Indonesians have high morale… their religious background contributes to strong ethics and respect for rules.”

A lot of Indonesian pronunciation is also close to Japanese, the supervisor adds. “So many (Indonesians) learn Japanese faster and speak more naturally than other trainees.”

It won’t last forever

That said, Japan’s heavy reliance on Indonesian workers may soon hit a wall. 

The demand from Japanese companies has grown so quickly that it is already outpacing what Indonesia can comfortably supply. “Because so many companies target Indonesia, eventually the Indonesian labor pool will be exhausted,” the supervisor said. 

Researchers over at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) indicate that, at the current pace, Japan will host a total of 5.91 million migrant workers by 2040 across sectors. But it’s still almost 1 million workers short of fulfilling their targeted annual growth. While there is no restriction on access for Indonesian citizens to work in Japan, the Ministry of Manpower said in 2023 that it’s sending 100,000 workers to Japan within the next five years.

And in other words, Japan’s needs are rising, but the number of young Indonesians willing and ready to leave is not infinite. “I think Indonesia will stop providing enough workers within five years,” he said.

In Nagano, the cooperative runs a quiet but sprawling network of foreign workers, roughly 350 in total, split between Technical Intern Trainees and Specified Skilled Workers. Most come from Indonesia. 

The organization partners with four Indonesian sending agencies, and Indonesians now make up nearly 250 of the workers under its care — by far the dominant presence across the farms, factories, construction sites, food-processing plants, and small caregiving homes that rely on them. Caregiving is the biggest sector of all. Around 160 workers are stationed in elder-care facilities.

What’s next for Japan? The supervising organization says the next viable pools are no longer in Southeast Asia but farther west. “The next countries will likely be Nepal, Sri Lanka… shifting from Southeast Asia to South Asia,” he explained. 

“We’re already preparing for that.”