There is a serious labor shortage, mainly in the transportation and nursing care sectors. To maintain Japan’s society and economy, we need to have a perspective on how Japanese and foreign workers can coexist in harmony.

Expect more stories and comments like this going forward. Transportation would actually be helped by self driving, which is getting there. See Waymo in San Francisco.

The biggest ageing problem in Japan is likely to be labour shortages. It is not lack of money for old people.

I like driving.

Many small and midsize companies are actively hiring foreign workers.

Translation: No Japanese willing to do that job with that amount of pay, fortunately still there are foreign worker from some countries willing to apply for that job.

Labor pressure building and let's not forget the farming and tourism sectors, some of which is driving naturally.

Keep in mind, approx. 3 JN's will die this year for every JN born, by 2035, it'll be approx. 9 to 1 = Labor Shortage!

Rather than hiring cheap foreigners, we should support the reintegration of people who are not currently paying taxes or working into society.

There are more than 600,000 such people in Japan.

Easy solutions do not produce good results.

There is no labor shortage in Japan. Rather, there is a shortage of people able and willing to work for ¥200,000 per month.

There is a serious labor shortage, mainly in the transportation and nursing care sectors. 

have you guys treid...............paying a higher salary? Doubt it.

One obvious solution would be for Japanese Govt. to provide housing subsidies to immigrants, especially given approx. 10Million empty homes, that's growing daily

This way employers could stay pay low wages, as immigrant employees would have 'free' housing, or figure out a tax credit housing system for employers to accomplish the same on their own etc.

HopeSpringsEternal

One obvious solution would be for Japanese Govt. to provide housing subsidies to immigrants, especially given approx. 10Million empty homes, that's growing daily

Do you know there are no compulsory purchase laws here? The number of vacant homes is irrelevant. Most anyway are in the countryside.

Foreign workers needed and MANY empty homes all across Japan, including cities, growing daily.

Subsidized housing for foreign workers will be a huge $incentive for both business in need of workers, and for foreign workers. who can then have lower cost of living.

Otherwise, millions of homes sit empty, economy suffers, as businesses can't attract sufficient #'s of foreign workers

You can start by dropping the "internship" program, which everyone knows, and the Abe-government admitted, is simply human trafficking, and start allowing things like dual-citizenship, easing immigration policies, and ensuring workers are not abused (and by that I don't just mean lip-service). Stop saying, "Well, golly! We have no way of knowing what the sub-sub-sub contractors are doing!"

Japan Inc. shutting down in many cases due to a lack of workers, so Govt. has to figure out the best way to recruit more foreign workers in order to keep the lights on, as Japan's got both fewer and older workers every day!

"There is a serious labor shortage willing to be payed 2.4 million a year to work 18 hours a day" - FTFY

Just open the borders already. Stop debating and do it. You have already lost millions of working aged people, If you're still sitting on the fence about migrants then don't complain about labor shortages. Japan should've seen this coming decades ago. instead choosing to maintain this archaic xenophobic nonsense about Japanese identity. Guess what? nobody cares anymore.

Just open the borders already. Stop debating and do it.

Japan will not do this. They consider their culture unique and have historically been very reluctant to accept foreign peoples.

They have always chosen very carefully what bits of us they want to incorporate into their culture. They won't be handing out millions of green cards anytime soon.

Japan should've seen this coming decades ago. instead choosing to maintain this archaic xenophobic nonsense about Japanese identity. Guess what? nobody cares anymore.

The Japanese people do. They really do, perhaps more than any nation on earth. I actually believe that they would rather be poorer than accept millions of foreign workers.

Remember that they essentially closed the country to us for over 250 years. Their society wouldn't tolerate millions of immigrants. They can barely tolerate millions of tourists.

It's simple.

No country has ever succeeded through immigration. History proves it, right?

If we're going to provide housing to foreigners free of charge, we should start with Japanese people.