TOKYO – While about 70 percent of auto repair shops in Japan say they are understaffed, their attitude toward hiring foreigners is divided, according to the results of a recent private survey.
The auto maintenance industry, which is responsible for vehicle inspections and routine checkups, is suffering from a serious labor shortage. The survey found that the number of foreign workers in some workshops is increasing rapidly.
The survey was conducted jointly by Tokyo-based management consulting firm Forval Corp. and the Federation of Japan Auto Repair Associations (Seishoren) from May to July and received responses from the owners of 574 auto repair businesses across the country.
In the survey, 34.3% of respondents said they were “lacking workers” and 37.5% responded that they were “lacking something.” In a survey conducted in 2020, the percentage of auto maintenance shops that were experiencing labor shortages was around 50%.
The reason for this is the expansion and refinement of the work required in maintenance workshops. In addition to servicing electronic control units such as sensors required for advanced driving assistance and safety technology, on-board diagnostics (OBD) inspection became mandatory in October 2021. Starting in October this year, OBD inspections will be added to the checkpoints in Japan’s “shaken” vehicle inspection registration system.
As traffic volumes have recovered following the coronavirus pandemic, demand for car maintenance has also increased. Forval analyzed that “recruitment has not kept pace with the chronic labor shortage.”
Foreign workers have become key to closing this gap. The share of companies employing foreign nationals was 17.4 percent, more than double the 7.7 percent in the 2020 survey.
On the other hand, 68.1% of respondents said they “have no plans to hire (foreigners)”, a significant increase from 50.5% in 2020, indicating a polarization between workshops that are proactive or reluctant to hire foreigners.
Regarding the impact of sharp price increases for raw materials and energy, 31.9 percent of auto repair shop managers said they were “significantly” affected, while 54.5 percent said they were “somewhat affected.”
In addition to high raw material prices, rising labor costs are also putting pressure on management. As part of its countermeasures, the Japan Auto Body Repair Association is conducting collective bargaining with four major insurance companies and demanding an increase in hourly wages for repair work of 17.5% or more.
(Japanese original by Akihiro Nakajima, Business News Department)
