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The story
According to the “Fiscal 2024 Survey on Private Sector Salaries,” the average annual salary for salaried workers was ¥4.775 million — ¥5.867 million for men and ¥3.332 million for women. Only 1 in 4 salaried workers overall reach the ¥6 million mark, while for men it’s more than 1 in 3, and for women it’s fewer than 1 in 10 — a finding covered on 5ch’s News Express+ board. In the thread, opinions split over why the gender gap is so wide: some pointed to differences in working hours and job titles, while others questioned the underlying realities of women’s employment, sparking a wider debate over how to read the statistics.
(Excerpt)
According to the National Tax Agency’s “Fiscal 2024 Survey on Private Sector Salaries,” the average annual salary for salaried workers was ¥4.775 million, broken down by gender as ¥5.867 million for men and ¥3.332 million for women.
There’s a gap between the statistics showing rising incomes and how little that increase is actually felt in people’s wallets. This article checks where the widely-cited milestone of “¥6 million a year” actually falls on the statistical curve, then walks through how much take-home pay really moves when gross pay goes up.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
They're not equal, lol
Tough at a tiny company, but that's roughly the average for a section chief (kacho) at a mid-size firm. At a big corporation you'd tack on another ¥2 million or more on top of that.
It's a nerve-wracking job, but out in rural Kanagawa nobody cares if you're running late.
Just drive safe and take it slow, that's all it takes.
And running behind schedule actually bumps up my pay too.
There's hardly a job this easy and this stable.
Work never dried up even during COVID, and since it's a big company, raises actually happen on schedule.
Smells like bait, but that's a job that'll be first on the chopping block. Get a useful license or qualification while you still can.
Well, it's a driver's job after all.
I don't think you guys get it — proper self-driving infrastructure is still a long way off.
It's not happening until the infrastructure is fully built out.
If anything, technical intern trainees (foreign labor program) will replace you first.
Try a matchmaking agency, you could probably find someone your own age.
You're not hoping for someone in their 20s, are you?
I get what you're saying, but the countryside isn't exactly representative of everyone either.
For ordinary people the average is probably under ¥4.5 million.
The working population also skews heavily toward older guys rather than young people.
Even at small-to-mid-size companies, plenty of places pay around ¥6 million once you're an older employee.
My kid's in their 20s and already over ¥6 million at a major company.
More than me — big companies really are strong.
I'm a college dropout from the Employment Ice Age generation and I'm at ¥8 million.
My wife, same generation, graduated from a national university, is at ¥8.5 million.
We've both been at our jobs over 25 years.
Stick around long enough and you'll get there too.
The real question is whether you can actually stay that long.
A lot of people fall out along the way.
There aren't many jobs in the private sector where a woman can keep her pride intact while working all the way to retirement.
Doctor, maybe? Get married, work outpatient duty just 2 or 3 days a week, and you'd still pull in several times what an average part-timer makes as pocket money.
I'm useless, so I let my money do the working instead.
The system that automatically factors investment income from tax-withheld special accounts (where no tax filing is required) into the calculation of health insurance premiums and co-pays is being fleshed out under the government's "social security for all generations" reform policy.
This legal change is meant to close what had been a loophole and an unfair advantage — it will effectively make it impossible to pose as "low income" on paper in order to receive generous welfare benefits or premium waivers, and it's positioned as a major step toward correcting the generational gap and sense of unfairness felt by the working generation.
Taxation on investment income is clearly coming, no way around it now.
Take a good look at reality, old men.
Working late is actually easier than dealing with your husband and kids, lol.
No married person gets to say "I'm beat from work, guess it's beer and instant noodles tonight," lol.
Yeah, fair enough.
Doesn't really feel "human" either way, but once the kids are grown and out and you're on your own, money does pile up pretty fast.
Most women are in easy desk jobs — if you want to earn more, get out there and land clients yourself.
Calling it a "job" is generous — it's just passing along contracts handed down from the government and pocketing the margin.
If you're in your 40s, you're normally well past ¥6 million, right?
I'm comfortably past it too.
If you're not past it, stop posting here and go work.
At my company even high school grads and bottom-tier-university Ice Age hires clear that level.
Isn't it the same as how a thread about Tokyo brings a swarm of Tokyo residents piling in to post? There are over 10 million Tokyoites, and over 10 million high earners too.
According to census statistics, wasn't it something like 10% of the whole population earning ¥10 million or more a year (gross, not take-home)?
That works out to about 14 million people.
But here's the trick — that "¥10 million-plus" bucket also includes people making ¥30 million-plus, or even over ¥100 million.
So the actual "wealthy" segment, out of a population of 140 million, is only a genuinely small slice — maybe just a few million people.
(My personal guess: around 2 million.)
And apparently this ratio holds true not just in Japan but in other countries too.
That's just the fact of it.
Women give birth to children and raise them — that's a legitimate contribution to society too.
In fact, it's something only women can do.
It's a biological role.
"Biological role" or whatever — there are tons of women out there who'd rather work than get some guy's dick stuck in them and pop out a baby.
> Women give birth to children and raise them — that's a legitimate contribution to society too.
Sure, but that "legitimate contribution" comes with zero pay.
So it's only natural that more people would rather go work at a company and actually get a paycheck.
If child-rearing really is such a legitimate contribution to society, then the government should just pay people to do it —
say, ¥100,000 a month per child.
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
The “Fiscal 2024 Survey on Private Sector Salaries” is an annual survey published by the National Tax Agency, and one notable feature is that it covers all salaried workers, including part-time and temporary staff, not just full-time employees. The low ¥3.332 million average for women isn’t just about a straightforward wage gap — it also reflects the higher proportion of women working short hours. Some posts in the thread assumed that “men’s and women’s wages are the same,” but equal pay for equal work and the gap in average annual income are actually separate metrics, and conflating them tends to derail the discussion. Meanwhile, the wave of 5ch posts claiming ¥8 million or ¥10 million-plus salaries isn’t a statistically representative sample — it reflects self-reporting bias, since salaried workers actually earning ¥10 million or more make up only around 10% of the total. That mismatch between gut feeling and the actual data stems in large part from this kind of skewed sample.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[¥6 Million a Year] Only 1 in 4 salaried workers reach it — but for men it’s over 1 in 3, and for women it’s fewer than 1 in 10.”
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