The number of newly entering foreign nationals under the statuses of residence for employment in professional or technical fields in Japan accounted for 0.9% of the total number of newly entering foreign nationals in 2011.

The statuses of residence of “Spouse or Child of Japanese National” and “Long-term Resident”, which are not included in the status of residence for employment purposes in professional or technical fields, have no restrictions on activities during their stay in Japan. Foreign nationals who fall under any of the following categories are also allowed to work within the limit permitted: those whose status of residence is basically for travel but permits work to cover travel expenses under the working holiday system, international students in post-secondary education in internship programs which enable them to gain work experience in a Japanese company as part of their educational requirement, and international students who are permitted to conduct an activity other than schooling. Therefore, it is assumed that the ratio of foreign nationals lawfully working in Japan could be larger than the number in the official statistics.

The characteristic categories of foreign nationals entering Japan for the purpose of employment are as follows.

### a. “Engineer”, “Specialist in Humanities/International Services”, “Intra-company Transferee” (Data Section 2, Statistics (1) 2-1, 3-1, 4-1)

The total number of foreign nationals newly entering Japan with a status of residence designed for foreign employees working for organizations in Japan was 14,184 in 2011, consisting of three types of categories according to their status of residence: 4,178 with “Engineer” status, 4,658 with “Specialist in Humanities/International Services” status, and 5,348 with “Intra-company Transferee” status. The number of foreign employees with the status of residence “Engineer” increased by 1,326 (46.5%) and those with the status of “Specialist in Humanities/International Services” increased by 545 (13.3%), while those with the status of “Intra-company Transferee” decreased by 478 (8.2%) from 2010, respectively. The total number of foreign workers with these statuses of residence increased by 1,393 (10.9%).

As described in Section 2, 1 (3) B below, the number of registered foreign nationals in Japan had been steadily increasing for all three of these types of status of residence in recent years. However, as of the end of December 2011, the number of registered foreign nationals has been on a decreasing trend since 2009 and decreased to 125,124 in total (a decrease of 6,075 (4.6%) from 2010) consisting of 42,634 with the status of residence of “Engineer”, 67,854 with the status of residence of “Specialist in Humanities/International Services”, and 14,636 with the status of residence of “Intra-company Transferee”.

According to the statistics on the status of residence of “Engineer” by nationality (place of origin), the largest number of newly entering foreign nationals with the status of residence of “Engineer” came from China (1,375, or 32.9%), followed by India (651, or 15.6%), Viet Nam (441, or 10.6%), and R.O. Korea (361, or 8.6%). The number of newly entering foreign nationals from those four countries accounts for 67.7% of the total number of newly entering foreign nationals with the residence status of “Engineer”. In addition to the decreasing trend in 2008.