The number of bankruptcies among nursing care providers in Japan for the first six months of 2024 jumped 50 percent from a year earlier to reach a record 81, amid rising prices and labor shortages, a survey by a credit research company showed Thursday. The previous high for nursing care firm bankruptcies in the January-June period was logged in 2020 at 58, when the number of service users declined during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. Comparable data became available from 2000. The rise in failures involving liabilities exceeding 10 million yen ($6,200) comes …