# Japan Counts 100,000 Residents Aged Over 100 as Hong Kong Opens Care Work to Foreign Labour

Employers warn the Hong Kong pilot scheme will raise wages for domestic helpers and price care out of reach for low-income elderly residents.

- Published: 2026-09-19T05:10:02.674Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/2026-09-19/japan-counts-100-000-residents-aged-over-100-as-hong-kong-op
- Publisher: Polylog (Global desk)
- Section: world
- Sources: [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/19/japan-has-record-100000-people-aged-over-100-how-societies-are-ageing), [South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3368043/foreign-carer-scheme-may-drive-wages-leave-poor-without-help-employers-warn?utm_source=rss_feed)

Japan now has [a record 100,000 residents aged over 100](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/19/japan-has-record-100000-people-aged-over-100-how-societies-are-ageing), according to Al Jazeera's account of the government's annual count. Fewer births and a shrinking working-age population are placing sustained pressure on a social care system that depends on paid labour to function.

Hong Kong is confronting the same arithmetic with a policy experiment. A pilot scheme will admit foreign domestic carers specifically for elderly residents. Employers and placement agencies [warn that the new category will compete for the same pool of workers as the existing domestic helper market](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3368043/foreign-carer-scheme-may-drive-wages-leave-poor-without-help-employers-warn?utm_source=rss_feed), raising wages across both and putting care beyond what low-income older residents can pay.

Both cases describe the same constraint. An ageing population needs more care hours than the domestic workforce can supply at current wages, so the choice is between importing labour, paying much more for it, or rationing care. Governments across East Asia are making that choice now, under fiscal conditions that have already tightened as interest rates have risen.

## What this means

Care is labour that cannot be automated at scale or moved offshore, so an ageing society must either import workers or accept persistently rising service prices. That keeps services inflation in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan from falling below a certain level, which complicates the task for every central bank in the region trying to judge how much of current inflation is cyclical. Fiscal pressure builds at the same time, because pension and health spending grows against a shrinking tax base exactly when higher interest rates have made deficit financing more expensive.

## What to watch

- Whether Hong Kong's pilot lifts the minimum allowable wage for domestic helpers, the price signal that would confirm employers' warning about competition for workers.
- Japan's next immigration policy revision for care and nursing visas, the practical test of how far Tokyo will go to fill the labour gap.
- Services inflation in Japanese and Korean price data, which shows whether care-sector wage pressure is reaching the aggregate numbers central banks act on.