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The story
Despite a severe labor shortage — the effective job-openings-to-applicants ratio for auto mechanics stands at 5.46 — the average salary offered is just ¥3.47 million, a full ¥1.53 million short of the ¥5 million job seekers want. Worse, among veteran mechanics already earning over ¥5 million, switching jobs can actually mean a pay cut — a “reversal phenomenon.” On 5channel, a thread debated why wages won’t rise despite the shortage, touching on low barriers to entry, work centered on parts-swapping rather than repair, and comparisons to doctors.
The auto mechanic trade remains in a severe labor shortage, with an effective job-openings ratio of 5.46. Yet the average offered salary of ¥3.47 million falls ¥1.53 million short of the ¥5 million mechanics hope for, and veterans already earning over ¥5 million can actually see their pay drop if they switch jobs. Even as advancing technology demands more specialized skills, why isn’t experience being rewarded? A look at the structural problems in this licensed trade’s job market.
Continued
Merkmal
Source: merkmal-biz.jp / Original article here
What people said
Re: #5
My brother was a mechanic back in the 1990s, but the pay was seriously too low so he quit. No days off, working over 12 hours a day. Take-home pay was just over ¥100,000 a month.
Re: #47
Same as hairstylists — industries with lots of people wanting to break in tend to pay badly
Car mechanics feel like they get put on a pedestal in manga and stuff
Is it places like Autobacs (auto parts/service chain) that pay badly?
Before they can become well-paid, they get moved to front-desk service-advisor duty
There's hardly any veterans left actually working the floor
Same as lawyers, top to bottom
If you're skilled enough you can run your own repair shop
Being skilled as a mechanic and being good at running a business are different things
The only places where skill actually gets recognized are probably classic-car shops or specialist foreign-car garages — places customers seek out by name
Bright finding out Hathaway died
Car repair costs are expensive
If a bumper replacement costs hundreds of thousands of yen, you're better off cycling through decent used cars
Getting locked in with warranties and all that is a hassle too
You're better off buying a new Toyota and trading it in every 3 years
As long as you don't crash, you won't pay repair costs
"Oh, it broke? Let's just swap the whole thing out."
These days it's less repair, more just swapping out the whole assembly.
And yet the pay is low. It's a thankless trade.
A workplace with no AC is rough
I'm also on low pay, but I'm indoors with AC all day so I figure it's fine
If you're tired of city life.
Remote islands have no trains so a car is essential, but if there's no repair shop on the island, you can't easily get things fixed when they break.
That's why auto mechanics are highly valued on remote islands.
And it's not just cars — you'll get asked to service farm equipment too, like the combines and tractors used in island agriculture.
You'll never run out of work.
And the islanders will be grateful too.
In a place where relationships are that tight-knit and small, you'd basically have to become a hermit-sage about it
You'd end up getting paid in fish and vegetables instead of cash, and you wouldn't be able to invest properly in things like the increasingly computerized diagnostic tools
And it's not just mechanics — I don't trust a lot of AC repairmen, plumbers, or even doctors
Since I don't trust them, I try to fix things myself as much as I can
But doctors are the one thing I really can't handle on my own
Same goes for doctors
You should be maintaining your own body, watching how things go
You need to research and learn
I think people who run to the hospital for everything are idiots
It's a barrier-to-entry issue
The number of full-time positions at top-tier companies is limited
Mechanic work, on the other hand, can in a sense be done by anyone and doesn't require capital investment, so it tends to turn into a race to the bottom on cost
ID:8rNV/aao0 is saying "pay is low because a lot of people want to do it," though?
The accurate way to put it is: pay is low because a lot of people (companies) want to do it, and they actually can
Same structure as why restaurant industry pay is low
By the way, plenty of people want to become doctors too, but the number of slots is strictly limited, which is why the pay is high
Mechanics are in short supply, but if a lot of people wanted to do it, wouldn't there not be a shortage?
Supermarket clerks are also low-paid, but is that a job people actually want to do?
Isn't it less about "a lot of people wanting to do it" and more about "a job that, whether you want to or not, isn't a tough barrier to actually get into and do"?
Right. Doctors are regulated to only allow so many per population
So they deliberately create a doctor shortage to keep pay high
If they actually let anyone become a doctor through a 4-year vocational program like it "should" work,
the number of doctors would increase and medical costs would drop — but they don't do that
Going forward, repair work will keep shifting to pure parts-swapping and wages will just keep falling
That's exactly why it's not really "repair"
It's parts replacement
Even parts replacement shows a difference in skill between mechanics, though
Well, they're called maintenance technicians for a reason
The main job is maintenance
Same with electrical equipment maintenance — once a part's past its service life, you mainly just replace it
On-site teardown-and-repair at the component level almost never happens
It's not repair
At the end of the day, all they're doing is swapping parts
Even though swapping just one limit switch would be enough — a ¥150 Panasonic part —
they replace the whole assembly instead,
and that becomes ¥3,500
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The issue of mechanics’ salaries isn’t simply a matter of “get certified and you’ll be rewarded” — low barriers to entry are a structural factor. If, like the medical profession, there were a system limiting the number of licensed practitioners, supply would be restricted and wages would rise. But becoming a mechanic is relatively easy, often just requiring graduation from a vocational school, and companies can secure workers without capital investment — so wages stay low even amid a chronic labor shortage. In the thread, this was framed the same way as hairstylists and the restaurant industry: “industries a lot of people want to enter get squeezed on pay.” But others pushed back, arguing that “a shortage doesn’t necessarily mean lots of people want the job,” splitting opinion on whether the root cause is excess demand or ease of entry. The thread also challenged the assumption that “mechanics work no overtime and get two-day weekends,” with one poster recalling quitting the trade in the 1990s over long hours and low pay — highlighting a gap between image and reality. Some also pointed out that in recent years, repair work has shifted mostly to swapping out whole units rather than actual repair, meaning skilled “repair technique” itself is less valued — cited as another reason mechanics get the short end of the stick.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5channel (Breaking News Plus) thread “Why Aren’t Mechanics Rewarded Even After Getting Certified? 🧑🏭 The Job Market Shaken by ¥5 Million Salaries! The Cold Treatment Hitting Veteran Technicians.”
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