Miyazaki finds solution to IT labor crunch thousands of kilometers away

MIYAZAKI – Like many of Japan's smaller cities, Miyazaki has been hit by a growing labor crunch, a trend highlighted by the mere 56.8 percent of high school graduates that chose to remain in the prefecture to work -- the third worst among the country's 47 prefectures. In the hard-hit information technology sector, the city has been encouraging firms to run businesses there to help energize the area, said Tsugunobu Ogino, president of KJS Co., a Miyazaki-based IT firm that makes e-learning systems. "But they are struggling to find engineers, since many move to Tokyo," he said. Now, the city in the southern Kyushu region may have found an unexpected solution, one thousands of kilometers away: Bangladesh. The South Asian nation faces a scenario that is almost the complete inverse of Japan -- there are simply not enough jobs for its ample working population.