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The story
On October 2, the Hokkaido Personnel Commission recommended that Governor Naomichi Suzuki raise prefectural employees’ monthly pay by 2.9% and bonuses by 0.05 months’ worth for fiscal year 2026. If adopted as recommended, the average annual salary for general administrative staff (age 40.6) would rise by ¥214,000 to ¥6,723,000 — the fifth consecutive annual increase. Total personnel costs for the prefecture are expected to grow by roughly ¥13.9 billion, with starting salaries for both university and high school graduates also rising for a fifth straight year. On 5ch, the thread split between doubts over public servants’ pay far outpacing the private-sector average, concern over Hokkaido’s financial health, and the counterargument that ‘if Hokkaido residents are fine with it, it’s not outsiders’ place to complain.’
On the 2nd, the Hokkaido Personnel Commission recommended a pay raise for prefectural employees to Governor Naomichi Suzuki, calling for fiscal 2026 monthly pay to rise 2.9% over the previous year and bonuses to increase by 0.05 months’ worth. The goal is to close the gap with private-sector pay, and if adopted as recommended, it would mark five consecutive years of increases.
The prefecture will now enter labor-management negotiations. If settled as recommended, the average annual salary for general administrative staff (age 40.6) will rise by ¥214,000 to ¥6,723,000. This would push the prefecture’s total personnel costs up by roughly ¥13.9 billion.
To help secure talent, the commission also called for raising starting salaries by ¥9,500. For university graduates, that’s a 4.1% increase to ¥241,500; for high school graduates, a 4.7% increase to ¥209,800. This marks the fifth straight year of starting-salary hikes as well, though the rate of increase for both groups is smaller than the roughly 12% seen two years ago.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The other 70% work at small and mid-sized companies.
↑So the gap is 2x?
What's your point?
And on top of that, civil servants don't even pay into unemployment insurance, since there's zero risk of their employer going bankrupt.
No bankruptcy risk
Can't get fired
Commit a crime and depending on the case your name doesn't even get released, let alone get arrested
And on top of all that, this is the paycheck.
Looking at the average, it beats Toyota, so a university grad is probably pulling in around ¥12 million by 30.
Toyota's average is around ¥8.5 million though? (per their official securities filing)
Where are you even getting your 'average salary' numbers from?
Are these people taking the piss?
No wonder kids these days are aiming to become civil servants.
Tokyo, maybe, but I can't believe private-sector pay in Hokkaido is that high.
They're civil servants, so they benchmark against Tokyo's private sector.
If anything it looks like they'd struggle even with a 10% cut, and yet they're raising pay?
Relax, relax — just cut back public works and welfare and the money's easy to find.
Prefecture falling apart? Not enough farm support?
Then pay more in taxes, why don't you.
Apparently the rich folks in the countryside are construction contractors and civil servants.
Seriously, this. (playing on the net slang "本コレ," short for "本当にこれ" — "this, exactly" — stretched into "コレクション"/"collection" as a joke)
What's the rational explanation for civil servants getting paid ¥2 million more than that average?
Probably the labor shortage.
They should just throw AI at everything instead.
That average includes middle-school grads, high-school grads, and bottom-tier ('F-rank') university grads lol
That ¥4.87 million figure includes part-timers and non-regular elderly workers too — of course the private-sector average comes out low.
Maybe they're from the Ice Age generation?
The competition-to-openings ratio back then was insane. (the "Employment Ice Age" generation that graduated into Japan's brutal 1990s–2000s job market)
Do you not know about the hiring quotas and age limits during the Ice Age era?
Do you not know there are 'human rights'-related connections [that help certain people get hired]?
Huh, guess private companies in Hokkaido pay pretty well after all.
Nope, they benchmark against Tokyo — they're civil servants after all.
So who exactly do you report that to, lol
Oh, some LDP department that handles that sort of thing?
Not really outsiders' place to complain.
Even if it's a local government, national tax money flows into it, so people from all over the country have every right to complain.
Local civil servants' pay isn't funded by local taxes alone — it also comes from national government grants,
so it's not something every citizen in the country can just shrug off as someone else's problem.
Add part-timers in and all you really do is bump up the under-¥3-million bracket — the bulk of the income distribution barely shifts even when you look at regular employees only.
There's a YouTube channel called "Toushi Usagi" (Investing Rabbit) with a video titled "Japan's average salary is ¥4.87 million, but here's what's actually in that number…"
Around the 3-minute mark it shows income distribution graphs both with and without part-timers included.
According to that, even for regular employees only, the ¥3–6 million range is the biggest bracket, making up 52.4% of the total.
I'll check that out sometime.
Sounds interesting.
Just watched it — doesn't it lump men and women together when it shows that bracket?
nobody ever brings up 'there's no budget for it' —
funny how it gets decided instantly, every single time.
Because plenty of politicians lose their seats if they make enemies of civil servants.
Background and Talking Points Behind This Story
Local civil servants’ pay is set through a “private-sector parity” system, in which a personnel commission surveys wage levels at private companies within the prefecture and makes a recommendation to the governor. The Hokkaido Personnel Commission based this 2.9% recommendation on wage data from 310 companies within the prefecture — meaning the thread’s suggestion that it’s “probably benchmarking against big Tokyo companies” doesn’t actually match how the system works. Meanwhile, the starting-salary increase sits in the 4% range for both university and high school graduates, a sharp slowdown from the roughly 12% seen two years ago, suggesting an attempt to balance the need to attract talent against budget constraints. The thread also raised the point that civil servants earn “more than ¥2 million above the ¥4.78 million average annual income,” but that ¥4.78 million figure includes part-time and non-regular workers’ pay too — it’s easy to overlook that this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison between regular employees. Opinions in the thread split depending on whether posters weighted concerns about Hokkaido’s finances more heavily, or the institutional rationale behind private-sector pay parity.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “Hokkaido Civil Servant Pay to Rise ¥210,000/Year on Average to ¥6.72 Million, Personnel Commission Recommends.”
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