Rapid increase in foreign workers in Japan

The number of foreign workers in Japan topped one million for the first time last year, the government has said, as the country looks overseas to offset labour shortages.

Tokyo has moved little on loosening strict rules for foreign workers, despite years of calls to crack open Japan's borders to more immigrants.

However, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has unveiled a plan to review the rules, saying foreign labour will increasingly be needed, particularly in the booming construction industry ahead of the Tokyo Olympics 2020.

A record 1,083,769 foreigners were working in the country at the end of October, up 19.4 per cent from a year earlier, the Labour and Welfare Ministry said on Friday.

The number of Chinese workers, topping the foreign labour list, gained 6.9 per cent to some 345,000, accounting for nearly one third of the total, it said.

Vietnamese ranked second, jumping 56.4 per cent to some 172,000, followed by Filipinos at 128,000, up 19.7 per cent.

The Ministry said the jump largely reflected an increase in the number of foreign students and highly skilled workers.

Rapidly-ageing Japan is desperately short of workers to pay the taxes to fund pensions and healthcare for its growing grey population, but it is almost constitutionally allergic to immigration, allowing only a small number of unskilled workers into the country.