Market Overview

For the past few years public fund has been spent as subsidies for launching (i.e., construction fees) and for operating nursery and childcare facilities (i.e., the cost for improving working conditions for nursery teachers and etc.,) which led the domestic nursery and childcare/daycare market to grow steadily.

​The domestic nursery and childcare/daycare market for FY2018 is estimated to rise by 6.0% to achieve 3,350 billion yen, and is likely to rise to 3,550 billion yen for FY2019, because the number of nursery and childcare facilities are likely to increase, and so are the children who use such facilities, as the attempts by national and local governments trying to solve the issue of children on waiting lists in progress.

Noteworthy Topics

There Emerged Consulting Services Providing Knowhow and Contents of Facility Operations

In order to respond to diverse demands for taking care of children, various forms of nursery business have emerged, such as company-led childcare, small-scale childcare and babysitting business. Some companies have even started providing consulting services offering the knowhow of childcare facility operations and related service contents, without building any facilities on their own.


For the companies with many female employees, childcare facilities are positioned as a necessary welfare service that can support the private lives as well as the working conditions of such employees. Therefore, more companies have introduced nursery or childcare facilities in the viewpoint to secure labor shortage. Targeting such companies, there emerged increasing number of consulting companies providing solutions regarding childcare, some of which even aiming to establish a business model not depending on subsidies.

Future Outlook

Because of shortage in nursery teachers, it is laborsome for nursery operators to secure such teachers every time they open new nursery facilities. Therefore, nursery operators have begun focusing on stable operations and have become cautious in expanding the number of facilities. Some operators have started placing importance on the size of the facility as well as the availability rate, rather than on the number of facilities.


In addition, in the society of decreasing number of children, shortage of nursery teachers has led the nursery operators to decelerate opening of new facilities or some of them even found their ways not to open any facilities. Currently, there still are some operators strengthening to open new facilities, but, in addition to difficulty in coping with shortage of nursery teachers, and as the issue of children on waiting lists for nursery schools likely to be solved in time, large nursery operators are projected to gradually reduce the number of newly-opened facilities. Therefore, the market growth rate is likely to slow down for the future.

Research Outline