TOKYO - Japan is planning to introduce national qualifications for housework services to address the problem of people quitting caregiving jobs. However, experts are questioning whether formal recognition of skills alone can help to make the services more widely accepted.
While the government is considering offering financial incentives for service usage, such as tax deductions or credits, experts are concerned not only about the financial burden of using the services, but also about whether certification would ensure quality and encourage people to be more accepting of having strangers in their homes -- particularly in a country where hiring private housekeepers or babysitters has not been very popular.
The government aims to hold the first exam for housework vocational qualification around the fall of 2027.
"Creating an industry-standard test would make it possible to objectively assess the skill level of household support workers," a government official said in a written response to Kyodo News.
Passing the test would distinguish workers from those without the qualification and give users greater confidence in service quality, the official added.
The push to expand housework services is part of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's growth strategy.
The plan comes as her government hopes to reduce the number of women leaving their jobs upon the birth of their first child, aiming to raise the percentage of those staying on their jobs to 80 percent by 2030 from 69.5 percent in 2021.
Some 150,000 people leave their jobs every year in Japan for childbirth or childcare, and about 110,000 people quit jobs for family caregiving, according to the government.
As part of its growth strategy, the government is pledging to make effective use of public relations, among other measures, to encourage more people with young children to use housework services. However, experts say that the question of how to overcome the psychological barriers to paying for help with household tasks remains unanswered.
Shortly before giving birth to her second child, Satoko Onishi, a 38-year-old Tokyo resident on maternity leave, said that housework such as vacuuming had become particularly burdensome toward the end of her pregnancy, and that grocery shopping had also become more difficult.
Nevertheless, she says she is still hesitant about bringing a stranger into her home. She also says that there is not enough information about whether the proposed qualification system would provide potential users with enough assurance and how it would differ from existing care-related credentials.
"Maybe it is better than nothing," Onishi said. "Even if someone has the qualification, I don't think my hesitation would really change."
Yuki Takahashi, the co-founder of the housework support company Bears Co. and the head of the Japan Life-Keeping Services Association, says that certifying service workers is not enough to address user concerns.
She founded Bears in 1999 after spending four years in Hong Kong, where she had her first child and observed the widespread hiring of Filipino domestic helpers by dual-income families.
At a time when such services in Japan were still widely seen as a luxury for wealthy households, she wanted to make household services more accessible to younger families balancing work and childcare.
Takahashi welcomed the proposed qualification system but said that a sharp increase in service users would raise the cost of recruiting, training and supervising workers. Since government financial assistance would go to customers rather than providers, she said eligibility rules should also consider how companies train staff, manage services and address issues.
At Bears, recruits undergo training and accompany experienced staff on customer visits before working alone. Once they work on their own, they must receive a customer evaluation score of at least 90 out of 100. About 70 percent of the assessment covers nontechnical factors, such as greetings, appearance and communication.
"A national qualification alone is not enough to ensure quality of service," said Takahashi, adding that how providers respond to problems is also an important criterion for customers when choosing services.
Japan already has a private qualification system recognized by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for individual household-service workers, based on written and practical tests.
A third-party certification system, introduced in 2016, evaluates service providers based on safety, service quality and customer care through annual reviews by the Japanese Standards Association.
Takahashi proposes using this certification system as the basis for a government registration program, making registration one of the criteria for tax relief. She said such a system could evaluate areas not covered by individual qualifications, including staff training, supervision and complaint handling.
Pressured by intensifying competition, bankruptcies among household service businesses with liabilities of at least 10 million yen (S61,600) reached 11 in the first 11 months of fiscal 2025, already exceeding the previous annual record of seven bankruptcies, Tokyo Shoko Research said in a report released in March.
Service providers have long struggled to recruit enough workers, often relying on foreign nationals to fill the gaps in their workforces.
According to Misa Tei, a senior researcher at Daiichi Life Research Institute Co., demand for household services will likely grow if financial assistance makes these services more affordable.
But if the assistance covers only services provided by nationally qualified workers, fewer workers would be available for those seeking government support.
"Demand is likely to rise, but the supply-demand imbalance could continue to worsen if assistance is limited to services provided by qualified workers," Tei said.
Experts say that how the assistance is paid to users will also matter. For example, if assistance is provided through a tax deduction or other tax relief received after payment, households would initially have to shoulder the full cost, which would make the services less accessible to low-income families.
Tei said she believes offering vouchers or discounts when the service is used would be preferable.
Making household services more affordable, however, would address only part of the problem that working parents face, she says. The policy should be pursued alongside broader efforts to reform working practices and change how housework and care responsibilities are shared, she added.
"The most important thing is to ensure that introducing household support services does not slow workplace reform or efforts to correct the unequal division of responsibilities between men and women," Tei said.
