The Immigration Services Agency updated its Employment for Skill Development Q&A on 15 October 2026, and the section on changing employer now runs to eight questions. From 1 April 2027, workers in the programme will be able to move to another employer on their own initiative, which Technical Intern Training does not allow, but the agency attaches seven separate conditions to that move.
What the transfer right replaces
Technical Intern Training ties a worker to the employer named in the training plan. Employment for Skill Development, which begins on 1 April 2027, is built around a worker-initiated move instead.
The programme runs for three years of employment in Japan and is designed to carry a worker to the level required for the Specified Skilled Worker status, with up to one further year to retake the tests on a failure.
The restriction period is one to two years, set by sector
Before any worker-initiated move, a worker has to finish a restriction period with the first employer. The Q&A puts that period at between one and two years and leaves the figure to each sector's operational policy. The agency says the aim is one year, but that sectors may set anything between one and two for the time being. The agency's own English overview of the programme carries a per-sector column for this, with values of one or two years.
Where a sector has set more than one year, the employer may cut it to one year on its own. An employer that keeps the longer period has to provide the improved treatment measures its sector policy specifies.
After a move, the clock restarts: the period has to run again before another is allowed.
Passing the tests is the first of seven conditions, not the only one
The worker must have reached the skill and Japanese level set for the sector. That ladder runs from A1 or above at entry, to A2.1 after a year, to A2.2 by the end of the programme, which is the level for moving to Specified Skilled Worker (i). The wider framework sits on the Japanese language requirements page.
The move has to stay inside the same business category, and no private job placement agency may be involved. The receiving employer has to be rated excellent on test pass rates and legal compliance, and to have room under its own headcount limit.
Then the caps. Workers who moved on their own initiative may not exceed one third of the receiving employer's trainees, counting the incoming worker on both sides of the fraction. Where the receiving employer sits in a metropolitan area outside the designated regions, workers arriving from inside those designated regions are capped at one sixth. A small employer that would have fewer than six trainees including the new arrival may take one.
The payment to the first employer still has no figure
The receiving employer pays the first employer a share of what it cost to bring the worker in. The amount is to be set by ministerial notice and then pro-rated according to how long the worker stayed. The agency states that the notice is still to be issued, so neither an employer nor a worker can yet put a price on a move.
If you are a technical intern in Japan now
The transfer right does not reach you. Interns holding an approved plan on 1 April 2027 continue under it, and Type 1 interns can move to Type 2.
Moving to Type 3 is the one point to check against a calendar. It requires holding Type 2 status on 1 April 2027 and having been performing Type 2 activities for at least one year as of that date. That is fixed by when you started, not by anything filed later. Completing Type 2 with good results still allows a move to Specified Skilled Worker (i) where the new job relates to the intern work.
For anyone who has already served as a technical intern and left Japan, that time counts as training time, and someone who completed two years or more generally cannot return under the new programme in a different sector.
Where the missing numbers will appear
Two figures are outstanding: the compensation amount, and each sector's restriction period. Amendments have been landing on the sector standard notices published on the agency's Employment for Skill Development page, the forestry notice having been amended on 31 August 2026. That page, rather than the Q&A, is where the numbers will show up.
Sources: ISA — Employment for Skill Development Q&A, ISA — Employment for Skill Development: outline and related legislation, ISA — Employment for Skill Development overview (English, PDF), ISA — 2026 updates list