By RYUICHI HISANAGA/ Staff Writer
March 2, 2022 at 17:57 JST
The health ministry building in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Applications for welfare benefits across the nation shot up for the second year in a row in 2021, apparently due to the economic woes triggered by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Applications rose 5.1 percent from the previous year, according to data released by the health ministry on March 2.
The number of applications totaled 235,063 last year, marking the second straight year-on-year rise since the figure fell in 2019.
“As the pandemic continued, the employment situation remained bleak,” an official with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said of the growing trend in applications. “We are watching how the January results will turn out.”
Between May and December 2021, monthly applications for welfare benefits rose from the same period a year earlier.
For the month of June, the number surged about 13 percent from 2020.
The ministry data also showed that 206,934 households began receiving welfare benefits in 2021, which were 8,376 households more than in 2020--an increase of 4.2 percent.
By month, the number of such households exceeded the same month in 2020 from June to December, except for October.
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