TOKYO - Japan faces a looming shortfall of nearly 790,000 IT workers by 2030 even as demand for digital operations continues to expand, while an estimated 15 million people nationwide are considered to have difficulty securing stable employment due to mental health conditions that have risen sharply in recent years.
At the center of efforts to bring these so-called dormant workers into the digital workforce is Ono Takaya, CEO of Valt Japan, who is working to connect people with mental or developmental disabilities to jobs at the front lines of Japan’s IT industry.
Earlier this year, Ono partnered with Mitsubishi Estate to open DIC Marunouchi, a job-training facility designed not for people with physical disabilities but specifically for those with mental illnesses or developmental disorders. By specializing in IT assignments, the center has been able to accept a growing volume of digital work and increase revenue per worker to more than twice that of conventional support models. The initiative aims to balance welfare and business by creating a new framework for employing people with disabilities, a challenge that writer Aiba Hideo explores through a series of interviews.
Aiba notes that people with employment difficulties number roughly 15 million across Japan, with the fastest growth seen among those suffering from mental health conditions such as stress-related disorders. The new project seeks to uncover these hidden workers and develop them into a productive digital workforce, offering opportunities for individuals to take their first steps toward rejoining society.
The goal is to fuse disability employment with IT business, drawing major corporations into a model that addresses the dual pressures of rising digital-sector demand and a deepening shortage of skilled personnel. While some critics question whether companies are exploiting subsidies or using vulnerable workers as a convenient labor source, Ono emphasizes that employment support can become an essential part of Japan’s labor-market infrastructure and contribute to the creation of a new economic foundation. His ambition is to expand the model nationwide.
The program focuses on two urgent social issues — labor shortages and disability employment — and seeks breakthroughs in both. Aiba meets Ono in central Tokyo, where the rapid growth of office towers mirrors the acceleration of digital transformation. Valt Japan, Ono explains, is determined to cultivate new human resources at a time when companies struggle to secure talent.
At DIC Marunouchi, individuals with employment challenges come to the center and contribute to projects commissioned by private companies, with the aim of combining economic viability and social purpose in a single business model. Although welfare and profit have often been treated as incompatible, Ono’s approach integrates them.
The facility, located in Tokyo’s 23 wards, is the first of its kind to specialize in digital skills for younger generations in their twenties and thirties, many of whom are digital natives. Workers here are primarily individuals with mental or developmental disabilities, reflecting a trend that has seen the number of people with mental health disorders more than double over the past 20 years to roughly six million. Their conditions are often invisible to others, contributing to the rise in employment-difficulty cases.
The center’s defining feature is the matching of individuals seeking to return to the workforce with the rapidly increasing volume of digital work created by ongoing IT adoption. One trainee in his twenties, who has a developmental disability, was developing an application using AI during the visit. Without formal instruction in programming, he began studying roughly four months earlier by asking AI systems for guidance. His current work involves building simple applications through natural-language prompts, with AI automatically generating and rewriting code in real time.
Even for basic tasks, he explains, users need some foundational knowledge of AI and programming, but he has devised methods that make it easier for others with limited experience to operate the tools. The ability to create functional applications within seconds demonstrates how AI can expand opportunities for workers who previously faced steep barriers to entry.
The project highlights how digital tools can open new pathways to employment for people whose talents have remained untapped. As demand for IT labor intensifies, the initiative offers a potential model for addressing both social and economic challenges by integrating training, corporate work, and support for reintegration into the workforce.
Source: テレ東BIZ
