Navigating Japan’s talent landscape in 2025: Hays reveals its top talent trends for the coming year

Japan is at the vanguard of a transformative era, with shifts in technology, sustainability, and work culture reshaping the employment landscape. As industries strive to meet growing demands in digitalisation and green innovation, companies are calling for new talent and skills to drive these changes forward. All of these issues and many more are explored in Hays Japan’s Top Talent Trends for 2025.

Encompassing a wide array of industries throughout Japan, the Hays Top Ten Talent Trends 2025 is essential reading for both employers and employees looking to lead the way in the coming year. An in-depth analysis from Hays’s recruitment experts, it uncovers the push and pull factors affecting Japan’s organisations and workforce, while highlighting how these issues are driving company strategies, producing actionable recommendations, and identifying the essential skills for employees and jobseekers to thrive in 2025.

“The coming year is shaping up to be one of immense positive disruption,” says Grant Torrens, Managing Director at Hays Japan. “This is particularly evident in a continuing widespread digital transformation, though it is most apparent in banking, where a past reluctance to adopt digital transactions is being replaced by a determined drive towards a cashless society. This, plus the rise in cloud-based entertainment and a pronounced digitalisation drive in both the public and private sectors, is fuelling a requirement for talent in the digital data centre industry and fintech. 

“Another revolution causing waves is the evolution of Japan’s historically rigid work culture,” Grant adds. “As more employees signify a desire for remote and flexible work options, employers are investing in office redesigns to attract employees back onsite, emphasising functionality and engagement, sparking a requirement for design specialists in the project management sector. Concurrently, supported by new legislation offering protections for ‘gig’ workers, the freelance and contractor workforce is booming, particularly in high-skill fields like IT and engineering.”

With extensive exploration into these and other key issues driving Japan’s jobs market, Hays’s Top Ten Talent Trends for 2025 is an indispensable resource for anyone preparing for the changes and challenges of the next 12 months. 

To view the ten trends in full, please click here.