Japan Real Wages: Updated Aug. 23, 2026.

Japan real wages in June rise for 6th straight month on summer bonuses

Ideas

Its good Japanese households are finally seeing the real benefits of their wage increase and or bonuses and maybe companies, for once, are beginning to help their workers when for a long time companies held onto their cash and didn't use if the good of their workers.

Nominal wages are nothing to be excited about as they include inflation in the economy and are not real or real wages that matter to Japanese households overall.

Wage growth in Japan is very much needed as Japanese consumers have not much in wage growth for many years despite the continued increase in inflation in Japan.

Ever since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, many Japanese companies horded their cash reserves and didn't increase wages much at all until maybe two years ago.

The Japanese government and the Bank of Japan tried to institute a policy or strategy to get companies to use their money in the economy with a "use it or lose it" strategy and for a very long time many companies were again very reluctant to dip into their huge cash reserves.

A 5.37 percent wage increase is very good for the large name-brand companies but its possible many of the small and mid-size companies were, unable due to less resources, to give the same wage increases.

It is estimated that up to 70 percent of the Japanese work-force works for small and mid-size companies and didn't get anything like to a 5.37 percent increase in wage hikes this year.

Hopefully, but probably not, Japanese companies, specifically publicly traded companies are are more humane than some or many US companies and actually care as much about their employees as they do about their shareholders.

The increase in summer bonuses again is very much needed as inflation in Japan, and the overall cost of living continues to increase ever since the pandemic ended.

Its good that the Japanese government is trying to keep some prices down such as giving a subsidy for gas and energy as every little bit helps consumers and Japanese households.

And its even better that the BOJ and government are trying to keep consumer prices below the 2 percent level even though some have suggested prices sometimes can increase up to 3 percent each month.

In years past, many Japanese companies were very reluctant to pass-on their costs to the next in the supply chain including the final retail customer whom they considered as stakeholders in society and the economy.

But those days seem long ago as profit margins continue to erode now, and unfortunately companies instead of absorbing their increased costs are quick now to pass-on their costs.

Yes, solid and continued wage growth are very important for the Japanese economy and just as important is stable price increases which are important and needed for companies to plan ahead as they need to know what is going to happens in the future as much as possible.

What companies don't like are fluctuations in prices or even fluctuations related to their overall costs as they need stability and need to know what is going to happen, again, so they can plan for the future.

Have a nice day!

Article source:  https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260805/p2g/00m/0bu/017000c