Japanese Government Subsidies for Hiring and Retention (FY2026): Quick Guide by Purpose and Application Pitfalls

Some hiring and retention efforts can be funded with national government subsidies. But subsidies come with conditions — such as submitting a plan before you start and hiring through specified routes — and if you miss them, applying afterwards won't make you eligible. This guide sorts the FY2026 (Reiwa 8) schemes by goal, so hiring managers can quickly find what fits.

01Quick guide by goal

02Main FY2026 changes (abolished courses)

The following courses were abolished on March 31, 2026 (for some, initiatives carried out before April 1, 2026 may still be paid under the previous rules).

• Career Up Subsidy: "Treatment Improvement on Social Insurance Coverage Course"（社会保険適用時処遇改善コース） — Improving treatment when part-time workers join social insurance is now supported through the "Part-Time Worker Working Hours Extension Support Course"（短時間労働者労働時間延長支援コース）.
• Subsidy for Employment Development of Specified Job Seekers: "Growth Sector Workforce Securing and Development Course"（成長分野等人材確保・育成コース）
• Early Re-employment Support Subsidy（早期再就職支援等助成金）: "UIJ-Turn Course"（UIJターンコース） — Note that old information pages may still be online.

The Business Improvement Subsidy has been reorganized from four courses (¥30, ¥45, ¥60 and ¥90) into three courses: ¥50, ¥70 and ¥90.

03Hiring: Trial Employment and Specified Job Seekers

Trial Employment Subsidy (General Trial Course)

This subsidy supports employers that hire job seekers who find it hard to get stable work — for example, due to lack of work experience — on a trial basis under a fixed-term contract of, in principle, 3 months, with the aim of moving them into regular ongoing employment (open-ended, 30+ hours a week).

• Amount: up to ¥40,000 per person per month, for up to 3 months (up to ¥50,000 per month for single mothers etc. and single fathers). The amount is reduced according to the days actually worked.
• Examples of eligible people: those who have left or changed jobs 2 or more times in the past 2 years; those who have been out of work for more than 1 year; those who left work due to pregnancy, childbirth or childcare and have not been in stable employment for more than 1 year; and others.
• Procedure: post a trial employment job opening in advance, and submit an implementation plan within 2 weeks of hiring. Apply for payment within 2 months from the day after the trial ends.

Subsidy for Employment Development of Specified Job Seekers

This subsidy supports employers that hire people who find it especially hard to get work — such as older people, people with disabilities, and single mothers etc. — as ongoing employees. The main amounts are as follows.

Requirements include employing the person continuously until age 65 or beyond, and it being certain that employment will continue for at least 2 years. Check in advance whether your work rules（就業規則）— such as the upper age limit for re-employment — meet the requirements.

04Watch the hiring-route requirement

Trial employment and the Subsidy for Employment Development of Specified Job Seekers require that you hire the person through a referral from Hello Work or a District Transport Bureau（地方運輸局）, or from a placement agency etc. that has submitted a "consent form on handling employment-related subsidies"（雇用関係助成金の取扱いに係る同意書）to the Prefectural Labor Bureau (a consenting placement agency（同意職業紹介事業者等）). Hires through agencies that have not consented, through job ads, or through personal connections are not eligible.

• You can check whether an agency has consented in MHLW's list by prefecture (as of August 20, 2026), or through the "Employment-Related Subsidy Handling Agency Certificate"（雇用関係助成金取扱事業者証）that the agency shows you.
• Trial employment also requires that you had not started selecting that person before the referral. The guidelines do not say how a workplace visit or interview held before the referral is treated, so check with your Prefectural Labor Bureau in advance.
• The Career Up Subsidy, Workforce Securing Support Subsidy, Work–Life Balance Support Subsidy and Human Resource Development Subsidy have no hiring-route requirement.

05Conversion to regular employment: Career Up Subsidy

This subsidy supports employers that convert non-regular staff — such as fixed-term or part-time workers — into regular employees (Regular Employment Conversion Course).

• Submit a "Career Up Plan"（キャリアアップ計画）to the Prefectural Labor Bureau by the day before you start.
• Requirements include: before conversion, the person has worked a total of 6 months or more in an employment category other than regular employment; and wages for the 6 months after conversion are at least 3% higher than before.
• People hired on a promise that they would be taken on as regular employees are not eligible. The subsidy cannot be used for people you recruited and hired as regular employees from the start.
• Extra amounts are added if you newly set up a conversion-to-regular-employment system or a "diverse regular employee system"（多様な正社員制度）, such as location-limited, job-limited or short-hours regular employees.

06Retention, work–life balance and training

Workforce Securing Support Subsidy (Employment Management Systems and Work Environment Improvement Course)

This subsidy supports employers that introduce systems such as wage rules, allowances and performance evaluation; workplace revitalization systems such as mentoring and 1-on-1 meetings; or equipment that lightens employees' workloads — and reduce their turnover rate. Systems: ¥200,000–¥500,000 each (combined cap ¥800,000–¥1,000,000). Equipment: 1/2 of eligible costs (cap ¥1,500,000, raised if wage requirements are met).

• Submit the improvement plan between 6 months and 1 month before the first day of the month in which you first introduce the system or equipment.
• Requirements include lowering the turnover rate for the 12 months after the plan period by at least 1 percentage point from the time of the plan. It takes around 2 years from plan to payment.
• The former "Nursing Care and Welfare Equipment Course"（介護福祉機器助成コース）was abolished on March 31, 2024.

Work–Life Balance Support Subsidy

This subsidy supports men taking childcare leave, covering duties while staff are on childcare leave (allowances for colleagues or hiring replacement staff), preventing people from leaving work to care for family（介護離職）, flexible working arrangements and more. For shift-based workplaces, support for covering duties during childcare leave is one of the easier courses to use.

Human Resource Development Subsidy

This subsidy covers the costs of employees' vocational training and part of their wages during training. Submit the vocational training implementation plan notification（職業訓練実施計画届）between 6 months and 1 month before training starts.

07Wages and working hours: Business Improvement / Work Style Reform

Business Improvement Subsidy

This subsidy supports SMEs and small businesses that raise their in-house minimum wage（事業場内最低賃金）— the lowest wage paid at the workplace — and invest in equipment or similar to improve productivity.

• Application period: from September 1, 2026 until whichever comes first — the day before the minimum wage for the workplace's prefecture takes effect, or November 30. In some prefectures the deadline is the end of September (MHLW notice, September 24, 2026).
• From FY2026, you can no longer apply after raising wages. Raise wages after you apply, and by the day before the effective date.
• Only employees covered by employment insurance count toward the raise.
• The subsidy rate is 4/5 if the in-house minimum wage is under ¥1,050, and 3/4 if it is ¥1,050 or more.

Work Style Reform Promotion Subsidy

This subsidy supports SME employers that work to cut working hours, encourage use of annual paid leave, introduce a rest interval between shifts（勤務間インターバル）and so on. The deadline for grant applications is November 30, 2026, and applications may close earlier if the budget runs out. There are also industry-specific courses, such as for construction, transport, and hospitals (physicians). Anything ordered before the grant decision is not eligible.

08Common rules to check before applying

Employers that fall under any of the following cannot receive employment-related subsidies（雇用関係助成金）(main examples).

• Less than 5 years have passed since they received a subsidy fraudulently
• They have unpaid labor insurance premiums
• They violated labor laws in the year up to the day before the payment application date
• They have ties to organized crime groups (boryokudan), etc.

Also, you cannot receive two or more subsidies based on the same initiative or the same wages (coordination of concurrent payments（併給調整）). The national government and local governments (excluding local public enterprises), among others, are also ineligible.