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The story
News that the average salary at private companies hit a record high drew more skepticism than celebration on 5ch’s livestream discussion board. Since the figures include student part-timers, rehired retirees, and non-regular workers, commenters repeatedly pointed out that “the number would be much higher if you limited it to male full-time employees” and that “we should be looking at the median, not the average.” The thread even produced actual data on median and average annual income by age bracket for male full-time employees, sparking disagreement over which figure better reflects reality.
What people said
You're a nobody unless you're pulling in at least 7 million.
That's about the average for male full-time employees.
There are a ton of part-timers factored in these days.
The real average for guys in their 40s is probably more like 7 million.
Everything's gotten more expensive over the past 5-6 years.
More accurate to say prices shot up first and wages are only now finally catching up.
You guys are at least hitting the average, right?
Yeah, that's about where I'm at at 38 — but I'll probably be capped here forever since I don't have the skills to go any higher.
Yep.
It's all salaried earners — student part-timers included.
At that rate you might actually lose to a full-time part-timer.
Actually, no — the government can only intervene in wages through the minimum wage, so it's pay at the bottom that's been rising.
Even so, this is still the majority.
4.5 million? What slum are you living in?
The average /Nanj/ (this board's) poster is a high-school-dropout NEET — same as always.
If you're not feeling it, aren't you just non-regular staff or something?
Non-regular wages have been climbing right alongside the minimum wage, so they've gone up plenty too.
The ones saying it hasn't risen are probably mostly in jobs like security guards — the kind of work dominated by elderly workers.
I'm a middle-aged full-time employee, for the record.
Apparently this is 2025 data.
Median and average annual income by age bracket, male full-time employees
Age bracket | Median 🎯 | Average 📈
20s | 3.7 million yen | 3.92 million yen
30s | 4.8 million yen | 5.1 million yen
40s | 5.5 million yen | 6.04 million yen
50s+ | 6 million yen | 6.79 million yen
I'm 34, so that's a bit low for me — though it's about the same as the people around me.
Don't use the median just to justify yourself.
What's the point of that calculation?
Are you trying to say someone earning 3 million yen in 2016 was actually richer?
The point is that the cost of living was drastically different.
You can't read that much into exchange rates alone.
Try telling someone that a 4.5 million yen salary in 2011 bought a lifestyle equivalent to 9 million yen today — nobody's buying that.
Gender's got nothing to do with it — there's no company out there that pays men and women differently.
The median age of female full-time employees is lower than men's, so their median income naturally comes out lower too.
Women are overwhelmingly concentrated in part-time and non-regular jobs, so their numbers end up lower as a result.
For your average college-grad-or-better crowd, 5 million yen is basically "that's what new hires make" territory — but for the people who fell through the cracks, it seems like no matter how many years they work, they can never clear that bar.
Japan's now ranked #2 in the world for inequality, right behind the US.
That's genuinely bad.
And unlike the US, Japan has rigid class immobility on top of a shrinking population, so it's turning into a society we've never seen before.
The median for college grads in their 30s is only 3 million yen, though? Guess it looks that rosy if you deliberately ignore the inconvenient stats.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
“Average salary” figures typically refer to statistics published by bodies like Japan’s National Tax Agency, and they cover all salaried earners — including part-timers and non-regular workers. That tends to pull the number below what full-time male employees alone earn, while at the same time a small number of high earners can drag the average above the median. The thread’s dueling claims — “over 7 million yen if you limit it to male full-time employees” versus “the real figure is closer to 4.5 million yen by median” — actually line up once you account for what’s being measured in each case. On the other hand, the claim that Japan ranks “second in the world for inequality, behind only the US” comes with no source cited and can’t be verified. A rising average salary doesn’t necessarily mean living standards are improving — it needs to be read separately from the trend in real wages, which account for inflation.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nanidemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Good News] Private-Sector Average Salary Hits Record High.”
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