The Immigration Services Agency has put a revision of the sector operating policies to its expert panel that would widen the work Specified Skilled Worker and Employment for Skill Development cover across four specified industrial fields, and would make aviation an Employment for Skill Development field for the first time. The draft went to the panel's 15th meeting on 19 October 2026, and none of it is in force: there is no Cabinet decision, no promulgation date and no public comment period for it.
The national totals do not move. Specified Skilled Worker (i) stays at 825,400 places and Employment for Skill Development at 406,500, a combined 1,231,900. What changes is the work each field covers.
Industrial product manufacturing would go from 17 work categories to 19
The field gains two new work categories: flat glass processing, and glass melting and forming. That is the largest single change in the draft.
Inside the existing categories, the draft adds specific work rather than new categories: aircraft parts assembly, vacuum forming and film processing across machinery and metalworking and electrical and electronic equipment assembly; buffing under metal surface treatment; glove manufacturing under sewing; laminating under paper container and cardboard box manufacturing; and tile and sanitary ware manufacturing under ceramic products.
The field's intake projection is untouched at 199,500 for Specified Skilled Worker (i) and 119,700 for Employment for Skill Development.
Aviation would become an Employment for Skill Development field
Aviation is the one field where places move between the two systems. It would be designated an Employment for Skill Development industrial field, with a single work category of airport ground handling under it. Three hundred places shift out of Specified Skilled Worker (i), taking that field to 4,600, and 300 appear under Employment for Skill Development, which currently has none. The field total stays at 4,900. The panel paper marks this change as still under consideration.
Construction, fishery, and food and drink manufacturing
Construction keeps its three work categories. The draft adds exterior work and block construction as primary skills under the building category, and would add snow clearance in heavy-snow areas as related work under both civil engineering and building. The snow clearance element is marked as still under detailed review.
Fishery goes from two work categories to three, adding wholesale fish market work at landing ports. Its projection stays at 17,400.
Food and drink manufacturing keeps two work categories but gains tofu manufacturing as a primary skill, adds salt manufacturing (limited to table salt) and institutional catering to its industry classifications, and picks up the Ministry of Finance as a co-supervising ministry. Its projection stays at 194,900.
If you already hold Specified Skilled Worker (i)
Most of this draft adds work inside fields that already exist, and that decides the paperwork. The agency's own Q&A on the system says that changing the work you do within your existing specified industrial field requires a notification of the change to your employment contract, not a new application. Moving to a different field needs a fresh application to change your status of residence, a procedure covered in our guide to changing your status of residence.
A new work category is not the same as a new task inside your own category. The Q&A permits a job change within the same work category, or between work categories whose skill levels have been confirmed as common through the evaluation tests. If you work in industrial product manufacturing and want to move into flat glass processing once it exists, that tested commonality decides whether you must sit an exam first. Nothing here creates an automatic route between categories.
Your current period of stay and your renewal are unaffected. Sector intake ceilings, when they bite, suspend certificate of eligibility issuance and change of status applications rather than renewals.
If you are applying from outside Japan
Nothing opens yet. The agency states that newly established fields and work categories can accept people only once the necessary ministerial ordinances are ready, and that it will post notice on its website when those are promulgated and take effect. For the fields set out in the Cabinet decision of 23 January 2026, no ordinance has been published and no target date given. Background on the status is in our guide to the Specified Skilled Worker visa.
What is still open
The aviation designation and the construction snow clearance element carry markers in the panel paper that they are not settled, and the package as a whole is still a draft with no public comment case open on e-Gov.
The panel's summary and full minutes for the 19 October 2026 meeting are both marked as due to be posted later. Those will show which of these changes the panel's own members pushed back on.
Sources: ISA — 15th expert panel on the Specified Skilled Worker and Employment for Skill Development systems, ISA — Revision of the sector operating policies, 資料1-1, ISA — Q&A on the Specified Skilled Worker system, ISA — Specified Skilled Worker system