An Investigation of Foreign Workers in Japan by Municipal Data --Their Regional Distributions and Effects on Regional Economies--(in Japanese)

This paper statistically examines regional distributions of foreign workers based on municipal data, and estimates their effects on regional economies. The distribution of the ratios of foreign to Japanese workers is approximately log-normal, and their joint distribution of 2000 and 2003 shows a sign of moving toward bimodality. High ratios are observed in small as well as large cities. In particular, a ratio for Brazilian workers is quite high in some cities in Tokai, and North-Kanto and Koshin areas, and is highly correlated with value of manufactured goods shipments. However, their effects on manufacturing industries' value added are estimated to remain at a very low level: the maximum is 1.7 per cent and the number of cities with the effects above 0.3 per cent counts to only ten. The distribution of the effects is more biased toward small values (i.e. has a longer left tail) than a log-normal one.