HelloWork subsidy: Three more years!

This is a great opportunity to look back at the past 3 years and what this government subsidy has enabled our students to achieve, as well as cover some little known facts about the subsidy!

1) Four things you did not know about the HelloWork subsidy

You don’t have to be unemployed to benefit from it

Some of our future students are surprised to learn that they can benefit from this subsidy even when they are employed full-time. 

Because of its casual naming of “HelloWork subsidy” (専門実践教育訓練給付金 in Japanese) and with HelloWork being known as Japan’s unemployment agency, most people indeed assume that you have to be unemployed to apply for it.

In fact, this subsidy is very similar to the Individual Training Account you will often find in other countries – You contribute to that account every month you work, and you are able to claim benefits when you reach certain thresholds.

Thanks to that, no less than 69 students who were working full-time went through our part-time bootcamps and could benefit from the subsidy.

You can receive both the HelloWork subsidy and the HelloWork unemployment allowance

Again because of its “HelloWork subsidy” naming, some of our bootcamp applicants confuse it with the allowance you receive while being unemployed, and also assume that you cannot receive both.

The great news is: being a re-skilling allowance, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from receiving both!

Deadline to apply for the subsidy is down to 2 weeks prior to the course start date

Initially set at 1 month, the deadline to apply for the subsidy has been taken down to only 2 weeks prior to the start of the course you are planning to join.

Don’t do things at the last minute though – Check out our subsidy application process guide here!

You can get an extra 80,000¥ refund if you meet certain criteria

Last but not least, starting from this October 2024, subsidy beneficiaries will be able to get an extra 80,000¥ refund if the salary they get from their new position after the bootcamp is higher than the previous one by at least 5%.

This means that the total amount you will be able to claim back goes up from 560,000¥ to a total of… 640,000¥.

This is over 70% of our Web Development bootcamp’s tuition fee.

It is 67% of our Data Science bootcamp’s tuition fee.

2) The HelloWork subsidy at Le Wagon Tokyo in figures

How much refund can you get through the subsidy?

To make things easy to understand, we’ve consolidated in a table the subsidy you can receive for each case.

How many Le Wagon graduates have benefited from the subsidy?

The HelloWork subsidy has been a fantastic help for our students, and the determining factor for quite a few of them to go through one of our bootcamps. Since we introduced it in October 2021, a total of 188 graduates benefited from it.

3) Spotlight: Discover Nicole’s journey, now front-end engineer at PayPay

With already a student loan to take care of, and having just moved to Tokyo, Nicole is very transparent about the fact that she could not have participated in the bootcamp without the HelloWork subsidy: “It really helped convince myself, as well as my parents”.

Although she signed up for the bootcamp at the last minute, she was able to go through the subsidy application process quite smoothly: “Actually, me having a middle name was probably the trickiest part of the whole application. Joke aside, I was working full-time, and it was also a bit hard to find time to go to the HelloWork office for the paperwork and career consulting interview”, she continues.

“I was surprised to receive the refund only 2 weeks after finishing the bootcamp. I also managed to receive the extra 160,000 JPY – As long as you have a job after the program, you basically get it.”

From a career perspective, the HelloWork subsidy (and of course our part-time Web Development bootcamp) was very much a defining moment for her. After completing her bootcamp, Nicole went on to join an apprenticeship program offered by Mercari, Build. She just now celebrated her 1 year anniversary at another high profile tech company in Japan, PayPay: “I can proudly say that I am an Engineer now.”

A smooth application process and a very quick refund: this is what most of our students who applied for the subsidy shared with us. With a mix of drive, financial support and of course a bit of luck, Nicole’s story is also the perfect example of how our bootcamps can help you kickstart your tech career.

You do not qualify for the HelloWork subsidy?
Check out our other scholarship and financing options for the Tokyo campus here.

Our 2025 Tokyo bootcamps are already open for applications! Discover more here.