The Specified Skilled Worker programme covers a defined list of industries. You apply into one field, you take that field’s skills test, and your status of residence is tied to it.
Choosing the field is therefore one of the biggest decisions in the process, and it is usually made casually.
Verify before you act on this. The Specified Skilled Worker system is revised frequently — fields are added, caps are imposed, and requirements change. The Immigration Services Agency of Japan and the ministry responsible for your field are the sources that bind. This page is orientation, not authority.
The fields
As things stand, sixteen:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Nursing care | No SSW (ii) — separate Caregiver route instead |
| Building cleaning | Steady demand, low barrier |
| Industrial product manufacturing | Merged from several former fields |
| Construction | Large and long-established |
| Shipbuilding and ship machinery | One of the original SSW (ii) fields |
| Automobile repair and maintenance | Technical; skills test is demanding |
| Aviation | Ground handling and maintenance |
| Accommodation | Hotels and inns; customer-facing |
| Automobile transportation | Added in the 2024 expansion |
| Railway | Added in the 2024 expansion |
| Agriculture | Seasonal patterns; often rural |
| Fisheries | Physically demanding |
| Food and beverage manufacturing | Factory work; consistently large intake |
| Food service | New applications suspended since April 2026 |
| Forestry | Added in the 2024 expansion |
| Wood industry | Added in the 2024 expansion |
A Cabinet decision in January 2026 pointed towards further expansion — linen supply, warehouse logistics and resource circulation have been named. Treat additions as real only once the ministry confirms them and a skills test exists.
Fields have caps, and caps close
The food service suspension is the fact to take seriously from this page.
Each field operates under an intake ceiling. When a field reaches its cap, new applications can be suspended — which is what happened to food service in April 2026. Candidates who had spent a year preparing for that field’s skills test found the door closed.
Before you commit to a field, check that it is currently accepting applications. This is not a theoretical risk.
How to choose a field
In rough order of what actually matters:
1. Can you do the work, for years? This is a job, not a visa mechanism. Agriculture and fisheries are physically hard and often rural. Care work is emotionally demanding. Accommodation and food service are customer-facing and need better Japanese than a factory floor.
2. Does the field have SSW (ii)? This decides whether you can stay beyond five years and bring your family. Most fields now do; nursing care does not, and has its own route instead. See SSW (i) versus (ii).
3. When does the skills test run, and where? Some fields test frequently and in many countries. Others test rarely, and possibly not in yours. This often decides your timeline more than your studying does. See the skills test explained.
4. Is the field open? See above.
5. What are the conditions actually like? Ask people doing the job, not people selling the route.
What is the same across all of them
Every field requires the same language qualification: JFT-Basic at 200+ or JLPT N4+. The language requirement does not vary by field.
That means you can start on Japanese immediately, before you have settled the field question — and you should, because it is the longest lead time you control. Our free practice test will tell you where you stand.
Care work is the one partial exception: most care routes additionally require the Nursing Care Japanese Language Evaluation Test on top of JFT-Basic. See the nursing care route.