APD | Japan home to nearly 1.66 million foreign workers

By APD Alice

Japan housed close to 1.66 million foreign workers as of October last year, a record figure since 2008, up 13.6 percent year on year, as companies increasingly hired them amid a labor shortage caused by the nation's rapidly aging population.

It marked the 12th straight yearly rise in the number of guest workers thanks to a government policy aimed at bringing in more highly skilled foreign workers and hiring students for part-time jobs, according to the labour ministry.

Workers from China topped the list, making up about a quarter of the entire foreign workforce at 418,327, followed by Vietnamese at 401,326 and Filipinos at 179,685, it said.

The number of Chinese rose 7.5 percent from a year earlier, while the figures for Vietnamese and Filipinos were up 26.7 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively.

By sector, manufacturing hired the largest number of foreign workers at 483,278, or 29.1 percent of the total, followed by retail at 212,528, with 266,503 workers categorized under "other services."

Tokyo had the most foreign workers with 26.6 percent at 485,345, followed by Aichi prefecture at 175,119 and Osaka at 105,379.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)