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The story
Based on a report drawing on the National Tax Agency’s survey of private-sector salary data, among Japan’s 51.63 million salaried workers, the largest single group — 7.99 million people — falls in the “¥3 million range,” with most people clustering below the ¥4.87 million average. Roughly 60% of all workers reportedly earn ¥5 million or less a year. On 5ch, posters pointed out the gap between gross pay and take-home pay, the heavy cost of raising kids, and claims that even a ¥10 million income leaves no breathing room — fueling a broader debate over the gap between the statistics and people’s lived experience.
(Omitted)
Are most people close to the average salary of ¥4.87 million? The largest group is actually the “¥3 million range,” at 7.99 million people
First, let’s look at how many of the 51.63 million salaried workers who worked a full year fall into each income bracket.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
There's no way ¥5 million is gross.
It's annual income, so that's gross pay, not take-home.
I take home ¥5 million and I'm no different from the poor, honestly.
Japan's GDP isn't suddenly booming or anything.
The gains are just concentrated among employees and execs at a handful of big companies.
Companies that can't pay, still can't pay.
Only a small slice of salaries are actually going up.
I can't believe people earning ¥10 million say they're struggling.
As long as your kids aren't going without, I'd say that's fine. But if you want to give your children every experience you can as a parent, it adds up fast.
Our household is exactly ¥10 million a year and we can't exactly live large either — we've got two kids. Stocks are keeping us afloat though.
It depends entirely on whether you have kids and how much you spend on them.
Also whether you're paying off a mortgage on a house or condo.
That extra margin should really be going into assets instead.
With a defined contribution pension or iDeCo (Japan's tax-advantaged individual retirement savings plan), you should be able to shelter around 10% of your income.
In Tokyo, rent for a place big enough for a family of four probably tops ¥200,000 a month.
On ¥7 million a year, that'd be tight.
Even so, isn't this too low? Is that why everyone's suits look so cheap?
Even outside listed companies you can hit around ¥7 million.
If you only counted listed companies, the numbers would get wild for the age range of typical 5ch users.
This seems way too low — is this stat even accurate? There's no way it's really ¥4 million, right?
For listed companies you can just check the Shikiho (Japan's quarterly company handbook) — average salaries are right there.
Money exists, it's just not evenly spread.
The mortgage alone was about ¥150,000 a month, plus another ¥100,000 for the car loan. On top of that, with rising prices plus school costs and everyday living expenses — I was amazed they could even get by.
And on top of it all, it's one of those "Flat 35" loans (a 35-year fixed-rate mortgage) that keeps going until just before they turn 70, lol.
Made me wonder what they're even living this razor-thin life for.
What for? For the kids, obviously lol.
Though every now and then you get someone who says it's "for the kids" while really just projecting their own dreams onto them.
We're also a full-time dual-income household with a combined income of ¥15 million, and we live modestly enough that we'd save ¥6 million a year if we didn't have kids.
But because we have two kids, we only end up saving about ¥2 million a year.
By my math, our two sons — one in middle school, one in elementary school — are costing us ¥4 million.
And that's only going to keep climbing from here.
my first summer bonus was only 0.5 months' pay
Even if this winter's bonus comes in full,
my income is still going to drop in year one at the new job…
At least you're getting a bonus at all…
Why didn't you make a raise a condition of switching jobs?
Yeah, just sending kids to cram school and other lessons alone is a serious expense.
If you're sending them to cram school and extracurriculars, you'd better brace for around ¥100,000 a month…
That's with two kids.
It's really that expensive these days…
Just getting them through cram school, high school, and college is insanely tough.
It costs a crazy amount.
First off, daycare for ages 0-2 isn't free, so that alone runs ¥60,000-70,000 a month per kid.
Cram school for two kids: ¥38,000/month. Swimming for one: ¥8,000. Basketball club for one: ¥7,000. Abacus (soroban) lessons for one: ¥5,000.
That's just the cram school fees for my 9th-grader and 6th-grader.
Summer break needs another ¥70,000 on top for extra cram school.
Winter break adds about ¥30,000 more.
Even if I blow through my whole salary, my money doesn't shrink — it just keeps growing lol
I'm close to that same level (minus the rental income).
Even with 3 overseas trips a year and hot spring trips twice a month, my money doesn't go down.
Winner right there! Though if you stop working you'll just get fat and turn into a bad-attitude garbage human, so keep working as a hobby lol
That's because the average includes rural areas too lol
Try a ¥3 million income against a ¥140 million condo — ¥100 million is just for a used one.
I'm still nowhere near that…
I can only assume management is dragging the average up.
The male average at companies with 5,000+ employees is ¥7.1 million.
"Listed company" covers everything from top-tier to bottom-tier, so that sounds about right.
Averages like this don't even include management.
At listed companies, a ¥3 million bonus for managers is completely normal.
Otherwise there's no way they could take the family to Hawaii every Obon.
I want to say just go get a job, and yeah it's scary, but also go switch jobs and raise your income.
Even if you switch jobs, it's job-based pay now with zero regular raises, so you're stuck.
Every company with high starting salaries these days works that way too.
It's hell — work 20 years with no scheduled raises, so your pay stays the same unless you get promoted.
That's pretty much how it is these days, but even under the job-based system you can still reach ¥10 million.
Honestly, there's just so much going on it's scary.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
This statistic comes from the National Tax Agency’s survey of private-sector salary data, which covers the full population of “salaried workers” — not just full-time employees, but also non-regular and part-time workers, as well as staff at unlisted small and midsize companies. That creates a natural gap with the gut feeling people get from looking only at average salaries at large or listed companies, and in the thread this led to people talking past each other, with comments like “¥7 million is normal at a listed company” or “this is way too low,” without acknowledging the difference in what’s actually being measured. It’s also easy to overlook that “annual income” here means gross pay before deductions, not take-home pay, which led to posts talking past each other — comparing lived experience based on post-tax, post-insurance take-home pay against the statistic’s gross figures. Other comments tied the treatment of management pay and bonuses, or the gap in land prices between cities and rural areas, back to the average salary figure. Since this is a nationwide average, it’s worth remembering that ignoring regional differences and variation in employment type can make the gap with lived reality look much bigger than it really is.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Average Salary] Most Common Bracket: ¥4M-Range for Men, ¥2M-Range for Women. People Cluster Below the ¥4.87M Average — About 60% Earn ¥5M or Less.”
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