Vietnamese workers make up 16 percent of Japan’s foreign workforce, making Vietnam Japan’s second-largest labor supplier after China, according to statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

As of October 2016, 30 percent of Japan’s over one million foreign workers are Chinese nationals, according to the East Asian country’s labor report published on Friday.

Vietnam comes second, providing 16 percent of Japan’s foreign workers in 2016, a 50-percent increase from 2015 statistics.

According to the Japanese ministry, 2016 was the first year the country had seen its foreign workforce exceeding one million, after witnessing a 20-percent increase from the previous year. Nearly 20 percent of these workers are working as interns, the report noted.

Last year was also the fourth consecutive year of growth for Japan’s foreign workforce, as the country continues to seek laborers from other countries in the region to make up for its lack of domestic workers as a result of aging population.

Japan is facing the gravest labor crisis since 1991, prompting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to call for a relaxation of the country’s foreign workers policy.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed his views that women and elders in the country should be considered for labor before looking to immigrant workers, though local policy makers have argued that employment of foreign workers is not always a case of immigration.

Japan’s labor shortage is most serious in the field of construction, which is seeing a surge in labor demand as preparations are underway in Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics to be held in the city.

Reconstruction projects following the earthquake and tsunami disaster that hit the country in 2011 only add to the problem, experts assert.

As of October 2016, over 41,000 foreign workers are working in Japan’s construction industry, compared to 29,000 workers at the end of 2015.

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