Explore employment in Japan through the 2020 Census
Who works in Japan, and what kinds of work do they do?
Explore the composition of Japan’s employed population through two views of the 2020 Population Census: occupation and industry. Compare patterns across ages and areas.
By occupation
What kinds of work do people do?
Compare age profiles, sex and labour force status across occupations, such as clerical work, sales, and professional and engineering work.
Open in Tableau Public Opens the English tool in a new tabBy industry
What kinds of businesses do people work in?
Compare age profiles, sex and labour force status across industries, such as manufacturing and construction, classified by the activity of the workplace.
Open in Tableau Public Opens the English tool in a new tabOccupation describes the kind of work a person does; industry describes the activity of their workplace. For example, people working in manufacturing may be engineers, clerical workers or sales workers.
How to use the tools
Both tools use the same controls to select categories and move between charts, maps and data tables.
- Select an area, age group and category. Click an item to filter. Shift-click to select multiple items; click again to clear the selection. Switch between major and medium occupational or industrial groups, or between prefectures (Japan’s main regional administrative divisions) and the cities and special wards included in the data.
- Compare sex or labour force status. Use “Colour by” to switch. The labour force categories are “Mostly worked”, “Worked besides doing housework”, “Worked besides attending school” and “Absent from work”.
- Choose a view. Use the tabs at the top to open the age-and-category chart, the category chart, the map or the data table.
About the data
These tools cover employed persons aged 15 and over in Japan, using the Detailed Sample Tabulation of the 2020 Population Census. They describe the population in 2020.
Source: Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2020 Population Census, Detailed Sample Tabulation, via e-Stat. The occupation tool uses Table 6-1; the industry tool uses Table 1-1. The tools include prefectures, designated cities, Tokyo’s special wards (individually and as a group), and other cities with populations of 500,000 or more.
Statistical category labels in the English tools follow the official English terminology in the corresponding e-Stat tables. The Japanese and English labels have been checked against the same classification codes.
Data preparation and visualisation: Takuya Iwasaki / Rokugeisha. The Japanese tools were first published on Tableau Public in February 2023; the English versions were published in October 2026.