That's weird that the article gets those basic facts wrong because it talks about the abuse of the employer thing and recent reforms for it and the lack of a path for permanent status. I was wondering why some of the people they interviewed wanted to have their spouses move there or invested so much in learning Japanese based on the facts listed in the article. It makes more sense with what you wrote.
Sorry, to clarify: I don't mean to dispute the article. But I think the article is focusing on a specific government trainee program that's been spun up to bring constructions workers for the Olympics.
I just think you were mistaken about the "every other [non-IT] career" part. There is plenty of immigration outside of the discussed trainee program and outside IT, so I just wanted to highlight that. Because otherwise it sounds like Japan has some kind of totally crazy locked down immigration system, but that is really not the case.
