(CTN News) – According to official statistics released on Wednesday, the population of Japanese population decreased by 861,000 in 2023 compared to the previous year, reaching 121,561,801, which is the greatest loss since the survey’s inception in 1968 and the 15th year of decline overall.
The pattern highlights how grave the dropping birthrate is and how urgently the government must act to bring about regional revitalization.
Japanese population sees biggest drop on record in 15th year of decline
Japan’s population, including foreign inhabitants, was 124,885,175 as of January 1, 2024, a decrease of around 532,000, based on a demographic census conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Only Tokyo had a little gain in its Japanese population, increasing 0.03 percent as a result of the large migration of people to the capital, while the number of foreign residents climbed in all 47 prefectures of the nation, topping 3 million for the first time.
The population loss in Japan was mostly caused by a record high of 1.58 million deaths, which far outnumbered a record low of 730,000 births.
Prefectures in northern Japan—Akita, Aomori, and Iwate—saw the biggest declines in population, with 1.83 percent, 1.72 percent, and 1.61 percent, respectively.
In the reporting year, the number of foreign residents increased by 329,535 to 3,323,374 as the tight COVID-19 border restrictions were loosened to allow more international students and technical interns to return.
The biggest rate of foreign population increase was recorded in Kumamoto Prefecture, where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the largest contract chipmaker in the world, built its first facility in Japan at a rate of 24.18 percent.
Approximately 85% of foreign residents are of working age, which boosts the labor market in Japan.
The three prefectures of Tokyo, Chiba, and Okinawa had increases in total population, including foreign immigrants. The lack of instances in which there were more births than deaths suggests that immigration had a major role in the increase.
The working population, comprising those between the ages of 15 and 64, decreased little to 59.02 percent of the Japanese population, while those over 65 made up 29.38 percent, an increase of 0.23 percentage points.
Source: English.kyodonews
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