According to Japan's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, 106,000 people left their jobs to care for their families last year. Noticeable were those in their 40s and 50s. What can be done to address this issue?

Canada etc in bringing in live-in home helper

I have literally never met a single Canadian with a live-in home helper. Most Canadians are having troubles covering their bills, much less extravagances like live in home helpers.

It seems about 100,000 people would prefer to take care of their loved ones rather than work for peanuts in a mind-numbing job. And that's a problem? Taking care of family is less important than working your life away?

In other words, how many people quit working because they couldn't afford care givers? How many quit because their family member was so bad even the hospitals wouldn't take them? How many of the 100,000 are female vs male? How many families have a steady wage-earner so that another family member could quit their job to spend the remaining days, weeks, months, years with their ailing family member?

So many questions about this question and the reasons 100,000 (out of 125,000,000) people have stepped off the rat race to join the medical care of an ailing loved one. Maybe a news agency (cough JapanToday cough) could do a follow-up report. I'll be over here holding my breath.

Just my observation after 20 years here is that Japanese don’t like strangers in their homes including for nursing, cleaning, etc.

Promote remote work, innovate! But of course, the dinosaurs can't think any further than "I can't eat my prey remotely!".

There's no issue to address.

If someone makes a decision to support their family full time, good for them.

Flexible work hours and work from home might help. Some may prefer to take care of a parent and quit working if there is enough money.

Better home nurses and home help. Better daycare centers.

Caring for family is one of the highest, most respectable, and vital functions in any society.

Is the problem that only 106,000 people left their jobs to do so? Would that it were more. Sadly, however, wages are such that one-income families are increasingly rare.

They can try to imitate Taiwan, Hongkong, Korea, US, Canada etc in bringing in live-in home helper for elderly from Phillipines, Indonesia, etc. These ladies cook, clean and can do all household chores. It's just Japanese people in general are still not open about letting people in their houses just like how they're not that very welcome to foreigners/outsiders in their country.

I guess that very much depends on the kind of job. A few, or in the future some more, still can continue working from home, of course only if they are still not too exhausted from those caring activities. Another opposite option might be, that they are allowed those IoT tools at their job, so they continue working at their company, but can monitor or use surveillance to watch the family member, and in case of need can step in and call a medical help, other temporary care worker, order some food, control light, heaters, appliances and devices etc. In short words, with money and a will, anything is possible already today.

Go back in time and bring in the requisite immigrants to do the child care and elder care?

JGov solution will be more subsidy, without carefully seeing actual problem.