Japans Olympic Dream Rests in Hands of Foreign Workers

At a construction site in the Japanese city of Kawagoe, worker Fan Xiuyu says hes too busy to miss the wife and six-year-old child he left behind in China.

I came to Japan to make money and learn advanced construction techniques, said Fan, 29, a native of Taishan, who says his job making and installing metal ducts for Haruta Kogyo Co. pays him three to four times what he earned in his homeland. The working environment in Japan is much better than China. Its clean and Japanese colleagues are willing to teach me when I ask them for help.

With a dwindling population, Japan needs more people like Fan to build and run venues and hotels for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The nation imported about 50,000 workers annually over the past five years. That needs to rise to 200,000, according to a Bloomberg poll of 14 economists -- twice as many as the public would accept. To satisfy the demand, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would have to break down centuries of resistance to immigration.

Even 100,000 immigrants would do little to ease the labor population decline and even that would be politically difficult, said Yasunari Ueno, chief market economist at Mizuho Securities Co. in Tokyo. Immigration is unpopular, especially in the provinces. Abe still seems to flinch at the idea of accepting foreign workers on a large scale for fear of losing public support ahead of elections in 2015 and 2016.

Workers labor on a construction site in Tokyo. Utilizing foreign workers is one of main issues being actively discussed at governments economic and fiscal council, an advisory committee for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to work out the governments growth strategy. Close

Workers labor on a construction site in Tokyo. Utilizing foreign workers is one of main... Read More

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Workers labor on a construction site in Tokyo. Utilizing foreign workers is one of main issues being actively discussed at governments economic and fiscal council, an advisory committee for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to work out the governments growth strategy.

Japan is caught in an economic pincer. On one side is a declining population thats sapping the worlds third-largest economy of workers. On the other are some of the most restrictive immigration policies of a developed nation.

Japan will lose four out of every 10 workers by 2060, shaving as much as 0.9 percentage point off potential growth -- more than half last years expansion, according to Cabinet Office projections. Most Japanese oppose accepting more foreign workers into the country to offset the decline, according to a poll in April by the Yomiuri newspaper.

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Japans Olympic Dream Rests in Hands of Foreign Workers