{"id":573659,"date":"2026-08-19T10:22:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/573659\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T10:22:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:22:37","slug":"japan-middle-class-loses-spending-power-despite-years-of-pay-raises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/573659\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan middle class loses spending power despite years of pay raises"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"ArticleTag_articleTag__P1Zo7\" href=\"https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/economy\" data-trackable=\"primary-tag\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleHeader_newsArticleHeaderSubtitle__ZlvPp\" data-trackable=\"subhead\" data-dark-mode=\"false\">Real take-home pay slides 10% post-COVID as tax code fails to factor in inflation<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-main img-fluid ImageNew_imageNewImageResponsive__f1VTu\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/cms-image-bucket-productionv3-ap-northeast-1-a7d2.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com\/images\/2\/2.jpeg\" alt=\"20260818N Japan middle class\" width=\"780\" height=\"auto\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleCaption_newsArticleCaption__fxo8v\" data-trackable=\"caption\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" style=\"display:block\">Households have cut back on non-essential spending such as learning and entertainment\u00a0amid declining purchasing power. (Source photos by Nikkei)<\/p>\n<p>KIU SUGANO<\/p>\n<p>August 19, 2026 03:28 JST<\/p>\n<p data-dark-mode=\"false\" class=\"Paragraph_paragraph__2p1wC\">TOKYO &#8212; The purchasing power of Japan&#8217;s middle class has declined substantially despite years of pay raises\u00a0as higher tax and social security payments end up depressing\u00a0take-home pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Economy Real take-home pay slides 10% post-COVID as tax code fails to factor in inflation Households have cut&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,12781,127,219,1759,11517,10110,111,139,69,2744,10112,11596,8262,1530],"class_list":["post-573659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-class","tag-despite","tag-economy","tag-japan","tag-loses","tag-middle","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pay","tag-power","tag-raises","tag-spending","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}