Japan’s average hourly minimum wage for fiscal 2026 has marked its second-highest hike in history, reflecting rising commodity prices. All 47 prefectures have raised their minimum wage levels.<\/p>\n
The national average hourly minimum wage will be 1,177 yen, or about 7.5 dollars, starting next month. That’s up 56 yen, or 5 percent, and slightly above the benchmark the government panel suggested.<\/p>\n
Surging commodity prices, correcting regional disparities and a sense of crisis regarding population outflow are believed to be among the factors pushing up minimum wages.<\/p>\n
But inflation, driven by surging food prices and a weaker yen, is outpacing pay raises. Inflation-adjusted real wages have fallen for four straight years since 2022.<\/p>\n
Professor Yamada Hisashi, Hosei University’s Graduate School of Business Administration says Japan’s minimum wage levels are low by international standards.<\/p>\n
He said: “Wages have yet to rise compared to price increases. It is necessary to raise wages in order to secure human resources amid a labor shortage. “<\/p>\n
He added that this is a necessary cost. The government should also keep up its efforts to convince employers of this fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan’s average hourly minimum wage for fiscal 2026 has marked its second-highest hike in history, reflecting rising commodity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1724,64,63,86319,99,164,941,86320,44,32363,86323,86324,86325,86322,6216,86321,86326,1996,1720],"class_list":["post-879878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-biz","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-japan","tag-japan-broadcasting-corporation","tag-news","tag-nhk","tag-nhk-world","tag-nhk-world-premium","tag-nhk-world-tv","tag-nhkworld","tag-nuclear","tag-public-broadcaster","tag-radio-japan","tag-tech","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}