How AirTA Reports Are Made
What we count, which employers a comparison covers, when a figure is withheld, and every change to our own coverage and rules, dated.
What Is Counted
- Job postings on employers' own careers pages and applicant-tracking boards in Japan, read once a day and deduplicated per employer.
- Permanent roles only. Internships, fixed-term contracts and talent-pool postings are excluded.
- A role is removed when it is missing from two consecutive complete reads, so removal dates can lag by two to three days.
- A month runs from midnight to midnight, Japan time. Month-end readings are taken at 04:00 Japan time on the first of the next month.
The Fixed Panel
- Every month-over-month figure compares the same employers on both sides.
- An employer is in the panel when every one of its boards was read completely on at least 80% of the days in both months, and on at least 7 days.
- An employer whose read hit a page cap, or that gained a new board after the comparison began, is left out, so our own onboarding never reads as hiring.
- Each edition states how many employers the panel holds and what share of tracked postings they account for.
When a Figure Is Withheld
- Shares need at least 50 postings (30 postings with a classified English level). An industry needs 50 live roles at 5 or more employers, and a prefecture 100 live roles.
- No figure is published when one employer accounts for more than 50% of it.
- Pay is compared only on the same posting across months, and only once at least 30 postings changed pay. Medians across all postings are not used as pay changes.
- A withheld figure is shown as withheld, with its reason. It is never shown as zero.
How Labels Are Read
- English level is read into five bands; single-band readings agree with a manual check about 80% of the time, so only three broad groups are published.
- Remote policy, work terms and required experience are read by rules; each figure is compared only between months read under the same rule version.
- Job functions are labelled by a model once a month. Function figures are withheld when fewer than 70% of the month's new roles carry a label.
What This Data Does Not Cover
- Coverage follows employers with machine-readable careers pages, which leans toward foreign-capital and larger employers.
- Roles filled through agencies or referrals without a public posting are not seen.
- There is no seasonal adjustment yet: the series began in August 2026, and year-over-year comparisons start once a full year exists.
Changes to Our Coverage and Rules
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-09 | HRMOS boards are now checked against the number of postings each board states. Job codes the reader had skipped were added: 18 boards had been read short, the largest 10 of 31. Postings that surface this way count as already listed, not new, and a board whose listing count doubles during a comparison is left out of it. |
| 2026-10-09 | A posting an employer renumbers is now one posting: its new number is not counted as a new role, and its old number is not counted as a closed one. 1,158 renumbered postings from July to early October had been counted as both; July to September were recomputed under this rule. |
| 2026-10-08 | Labels for July to September 2026 were filled in from the postings as stored on this date; from October each month is labelled as it closes. |
| 2026-10-08 | Manufacturing and Plant Operations were retired; their roles moved to Production (shop-floor manufacturing) and a new Production Control function. |
| 2026-10-07 | Clinical Specialist was split out of the clinical affairs function. |
| 2026-10-06 | Clinical Trial Coordination (CRC and SMA roles) was split out of the clinical research, operations and affairs functions. |
| 2026-10-08 | Work-conditions rules v21 were applied to every posting, changing how flexible hours are read. Month labels are compared only under the same rules. |
| 2026-09-24 | The rules reading required years of experience were revised (v2, then v3). |
| 2026-09-13 | Every posting was relabelled with a job function. Months frozen before this date carry the older labels. |
| 2026-08-28 | The days-listed measure was redefined to count roles still open; earlier readings were withdrawn. |
| 2026-08-17 | A large group of employers was added to the directory. Employers added after a comparison begins are outside its panel. |
| 2026-07-30 | A per-board fetch cap was lifted; thirteen boards went from a capped count to their full list. Capped syncs are excluded from the panel. |
| 2026-07-21 | The oldest careers page still tracked was first read. |
Dated changes that could move a figure without anything happening in the market. A comparison that spans one withholds the figures it affects.
Corrections
No edition has been corrected.