26-7-2023 (TOKYO) The number of Japanese nationals has decreased at the fastest pace ever, while the number of foreign residents has risen to a record of nearly 3 million, according to government data released on Wednesday. The data shows that Japanese society is ageing across the country, and foreign nationals now make up an ever bigger role in making up for the shrinking population.
The number of Japanese nationals fell for the 14th year, by about 800,000 people, to 122.42 million, according to resident registration data as of January 1, 2023, released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. For the first time, the number of Japanese residents fell in all 47 prefectures.
In contrast, the number of foreign nationals living in Japan was a record 2.99 million, a 10.7% increase from the previous year, the biggest year-on-year increase since the ministry began tracking the data a decade ago. As of January 1, 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, there were 2.87 million foreigners living in Japan.
The government aims to address the problem of a shrinking population by employing more women and promoting labour market reforms to maximise the employment of women, the elderly, and others. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made reversing the sliding birth rate a top priority, and his government plans to earmark 3.5 trillion yen (US$25 billion) a year for child care and other measures to support parents.
Despite these efforts, a group of Tokyo-based public think tanks said last year that Japan needed about four times as many foreign workers by 2040 to achieve the government’s economic growth forecasts. Tokyo had the most foreign residents, with 581,112 of them, or 4.2% of the capital’s population.
