Which STEM degrees are in demand?

Which STEM degrees are in (high) demand. I know that those working in the TE branches seem to earn a bit more and are in more demand but I am wondering about the S branch. Like biomedical sciences or engineering.

Are they in demand?

Do you mean for direct out of university jobs or for people with experience?

Yes, with experience. I know that straight out of university puts you in the same position as the local Japanese. Let's say 1 or 2 years of experience.

Well 1-2 years experience is like no experience. Probably even worse. Because no experience means for a company that they hire you fresh out of university and youfll be theirs to mold.

I would say, having experience starts at simmering like 5 years, if you plan to relocate to Japan with the advantage of ghaving experienceh

Regarding which Science fields are in most demand, why not search for job openings? It gives you the current picture, and it will obviously change over time, but we can all guess that petrol engineers will become less in demand and solar / nuclear / wind energy engineers more. So more or less the same future outlook applies to Japan as to other developed countries. Maybe the one differentiator between Japan and other countries is their even more extreme age distribution. So likely jobs in health care are going to continue to have a high demand (but are also most complicated for foreigners to get into due to language and certification barriers)

So it is actually better to have no experience and try to get a job in Japan straight out of university? Or have at least 5 years of experience? That's quite an interesting opinion.

Well there are some jobs for STEM fields directly out of university - but these are for Graduates who completed their education in Japanese.

As such - there is almost no STEM specific jobs for recent foreign graduates in Japan unless you have a specific skill that it not available in Japan.

To put it simple - employing someone who is Japanese is just cheaper. There is no costs in getting a visa, no worries about not being able to communicate with colleagues, no costs in providing accommodation and flights.

There are a good number of overseas people working in the STEM fields in Japan - but they are normally highly employable people in their home country with Japan often been seen as being a "plum position" on the international circuit.

As a qualified geologist and science teacher who has lived and worked in Japan - even getting a job at an international school requires years of experience, good luck and impeccable references.

One of the more messy way that I've seen people move to Japan and them work in a professional context is to come as a language teacher and then move across to another job once you make connections to your qualified industry in Japan. Most of the people who I personally know who work in Japan in the STEM field are in healthcare as an expert advisor, technical director or doing things to make inventions from Japan more sellable on the international market. All of these people were either moved to Japan from a head company based overseas or were recruited due to their expertise.

Just from personal experience. I worked so far twice in Japan (and will soon - border opening permitting move back again)
- first time: while still at university for 5 months at a research lab (RIKEN). This wasn't classified as proper work (I think I had a visa as "cultural activities" or something like this)
- second time: with 15 year of experience in pharmaceutical industry. I relocated to Japan without a job (following my then husband) and was scouted by a local company without me even searching for a job.
- now the third time I will have 21 years of relevant experience and will relocate again next year to Japan (I had moved back to Europe in the meantime). Again getting headhunted specifically for this position (well, actually they headhunted me for another position to which I said "no, I am only interested, if it involves moving back to Japan", and the company was happy to accept)

So yeah, working in Japan either requires to graduate from a Japanese university and entering the workforce as a new graduate (definitely possible, I have seen that happening at my previous company. They were even searching actively for these kind of graduates), or moving to Japan after having gained considerable experience in your field abroad or going the stony path of becoming an English teacher (which I hear really only works if you are a native speaker) and then try to move to another field while in the country. Well, there is a 4th option, specially for science, to get a postDoc position in Japan. I do know quite a number of postDocs in Japan, so that would be a possibility to relocate temporarily to Japan (a few years, depending on the grant). For that option you also don't need Japanese language capabilities, but this is only interesting if your goal in life is to stay in academia. These are generally highly mobile people working from Sweden one year, doing a postDoc in the US and then the next in Japan... For these kind of positions any "S" study would be fine.

Anyway, if you are asking what to study, I think you should choose something you are interested in anyway, regardless of Japan or not.

Your major donft really matter for new grads. The companies will train you from scratch, and you may not have any say in which position you are placed in. You apply for the company not the position, it is not uncommon for liberal arts majors to be assigned into engineering departments and trained from scratch.
Moreover, I have noticed some biases against STEM majors for positions which involve strategy, marketing, leadership.

Imagine an English teacher building a nuclear reactor lol.

@G
Ummc I donft think thatfs how it works. At least at my company we were looking only for graduates from certain fields (pharmacy, biology, chemistryc). Obviously in the HR department also other majors entered. But we wouldnft have hired a major in nuclear science to do pharmaceutical work. And much less so a graduate of law school or business administration.

But yes, new graduates are getting essentially trained by their new company. What I saw is that for the first 6-12 months it was only training and little actual work and practically no work on your own. Very different to new graduates in Western countries where after s a short introduction (maybe a month or so), you have your own tasks that you are responsible for. With a mentor, but you are the one driving the task.

"The companies will train you from scratch, and you may not have any say in which position you are placed in."

This is not necessarily only for new graduates. At various large Japanese companies, they can screen applicants by giving them a math or IQ test. Those that score the highest on those tests, in addition to meeting their other requirements, are the ones that make it to the final interviews or are hired.

When they are hired (in such companies), they don't have a set position or title. They are trained (or retrained based on past job experience) by their new company for positions of need or where they believe the new hire will do best at.

There is a range, as to what type of applicants can be trained to do what type of jobs. The company and HR will have usually already figured this out and have a formula as to what they believe will work.

@mfedley

"...As such - there is almost no STEM specific jobs for recent foreign graduates in Japan unless you have a specific skill that it not available in Japan...

...To put it simple - employing someone who is Japanese is just cheaper...

...One of the more messy way that I've seen people move to Japan and them work in a professional context is to come as a language teacher and then move across to another job..."


I mostly agree with what you typed, but there are a lot of odd paths taken and stories that I have seen over the years:

1) Situations like American military types that were stationed in Japan, then got jobs when they got out of the military.

Closely related are dependents of American military or civilian workers, who grew up in Japan, then did interviews for jobs in Japan and were hired.

2) Foreigners who got married to Japanese nationals, went to school in Japan, then got local jobs.

Closely related are married foreigners (that already graduated from college or never went) who became fluent in Japanese, then moved up to better and better jobs based on experience and connections.

3) International companies with a strong emphasis on English (or other foreign language) and particular technical skills.

In this context, they are looking for bilingual people with certain technical skills. Japanese nationals wouldn't have an advantage, because of the dual high level of English and Japanese needed.

Depending on the job, not necessarily someone bilingual in English (though seems to be the most common situation). Could be Chinese (include Taiwan in the mix), Korean, etc... Depends on numerous factors and what the company is doing.

Such companies are looking for a particular type of applicant, so will provide visas as necessary, if they believe they have the right person.