Immigrants Flood Into Japan At A Record Pace
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Apr 16, 2017
Japan’s demographic “time-bomb” has been widely documented in recent years: as we discussed most recently in February, as troubling as Japan’s deflationary economic quagmire is, the biggest threat facing Japan has little to do with its balance sheet and everything to do with its demographics, for the simple reason that not only is Japan’s population the oldest it has ever been, as well as the oldest on average in the entire world, but is now also officially shrinking.
Earlier this year, data released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications showed that in the latest 5 year census, Japan’s population declined last year for the first time in nearly a century. The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said the latest census shows that Japan’s population as of Oct. 1, 2015, was 127,110,047 – a decline of 947,305, or 0.7 percent, since the last census conducted in 2010. The number of Japanese dropped to 127.1 million in a national census for 2015, down 0.7 percent compared with five years earlier, and was the first recorded decline since the 5-year census started in 1920. As the Shimbun adds, in the 2015 census, men accounted for 61,829,237 of the population, and women 65,280,810.
But don’t count Japan out yet.
In taking a page out of Europe’s playbook, where the aging population is likewise shrinking if not at such a troubling rate, over the weekend, the government reported that the net inflow of foreign residents into Japan was the largest ever during the last statistical year, as the Abe regime pushes policies to attract foreign workers to lessen the economic repercussions from a declining and graying population.
Inflows of foreign residents reached 136,000 for the October 2015-September 2016 period, according to data released Friday by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. That figure is more than 40% above the previous year’s and the fourth consecutive net inflow of foreigners, as well as the largest net inflow since such records began in 1950.
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