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The story
A survey released in August by the Japan Federation of Local Government Workers’ Unions found that a 22-year-old living alone in one of 10 urban prefectures, including Tokyo, needs ¥231,722 a month (take-home) if male and ¥239,123 if female to cover living costs. Meanwhile, Tokyo’s minimum wage, converted to a monthly salary, comes to only about ¥225,000 even before tax — and the gap widens by tens of thousands of yen more once compared against take-home pay. On 5ch, the figures sparked a divided discussion, with some worried about talent draining out of rural areas, others debating how a minimum wage hike would affect employment at small and mid-size businesses, and still others arguing over the wage gap between cities and the countryside.
(excerpt) ◆ “The discussion should center more on actual living costs”
According to a survey on union members’ living costs released in August by the Japan Federation of Local Government and Municipal Workers’ Unions (Jichiroren), in 10 urban prefectures — including the greater Tokyo area, Osaka, and Aichi — a 22-year-old living alone, equivalent to a first-year university graduate, needs ¥231,722 a month if male and ¥239,123 if female to cover living costs, on a “take-home” basis after tax and social insurance deductions.
Meanwhile, converting Tokyo’s new minimum wage into a monthly salary (22 working days, 8 hours a day) comes to about ¥225,000 on a “gross” basis, before tax and other deductions. Even on a gross basis, that falls short of the required living costs — and compared against take-home pay, the gap widens to tens of thousands of yen.
Source: tokyo-np.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Prefectures with a high proportion of young women (20s-30s):
• Kagoshima Prefecture (#1 in Japan for share of women in their 20s-30s)
• Nara Prefecture
• Fukuoka Prefecture
• Miyazaki Prefecture
• Hyogo Prefecture
No idea if the amount of work itself shrinks, but they won't be able to hire people cheaply anymore, so conditions for existing employees are definitely going to get harder, right?
Well, if you're a full-time employee ("seishain") stuck on minimum wage, you should probably just change jobs.
Are you just ignoring the effort of companies that actually headquarter themselves in the regions?
And that's exactly how they ended up delivering Yamato parcel mail and handing out flyers instead. And it's not just that — a place that used to hire 3 people at ¥1,000/hr could end up hiring only 2 at ¥1,500/hr. Otherwise, the cost just gets passed straight on to prices.
How much longer can public opinion tolerate this over-concentration in one city?
They should move the capital to somewhere like Nagoya sooner rather than later.
In reality, the big earthquakes keep happening out in the countryside.
But when is this 'Tokyo direct-hit earthquake' actually going to happen? For all the fuss about it, it's always the regional areas that end up getting hit by disasters.
Whatever you personally feel, the data backs it up clearly — both rural and urban areas need foreign labor, that's really all there is to it.
'We don't need bottom-tier Japanese workers!' is basically the mood right now.
Well, obviously. There's no Chinese or Vietnamese worker out there who actually wants to work in the countryside by choice.
Fools earning around minimum wage barely pay any tax to begin with.
Talking income tax specifically, someone earning ¥15 million a year pays 70 times the tax of someone earning ¥3 million.
What that means is: every single year, they're paying what it would take a ¥3-million earner 70 years to pay.
Annual income (multiple) → Income tax (multiple)
¥3M (1x) → ¥30K (1x)
¥6M (2x) → ¥210K (7x)
¥9M (3x) → ¥640K (21x)
¥12M (4x) → ¥1.2M (40x)
¥15M (5x) → ¥2.16M (72x)
You probably don't know about 'kodomobeya' (cramped, tiny rooms nicknamed 'kid's rooms'), but no matter how broke you are, go under ¥44,000 and you're in for a living hell.
That's a sketchy place, lol. If you actually try to rent it, the agent talks you out of it, lol.
The rooms posted in the window are just for show. Say you want that one, and suddenly it's 'already contracted,' they steer you toward something else, show you around, and you end up with a pricier place in the end — that's the classic Osaka real-estate sales trick.
They're not having kids precisely because they're well-off.
What are you talking about? It's the place with the biggest concentration of poor people in all of Japan.
People too incompetent to pay proper wages should be steered toward becoming employees, not business owners.
It's actually the other way around — the economy never develops precisely because we keep propping up small, marginal businesses instead of letting them fail.
Not per hour.
That's the pay for an entire day.
That's what track marshals were being paid at the China GT Shanghai round.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HRqINKoa4AADmDy.jpg
You're all getting played, lol.
Hmm, you need a source for that?
https://image-tm.s2mr.jp/i/original/1791159234629.jpeg
Average employee salaries have barely budged, yet executive pay alone has shot up like crazy.
Back in the '90s, a ¥100-million executive salary was something only a tiny handful of major corporations had.
Background and key points of this discussion
Minimum wage levels are set prefecture by prefecture, with local councils deciding based on guidelines from the Central Minimum Wage Council, and there’s a gap of several hundred yen per hour between urban and rural areas. This Jichiroren survey compares living costs on a “take-home” basis against the minimum wage converted to a monthly salary on a “gross” basis, so it isn’t a perfectly direct comparison — but it’s worth noting that the gap only widens further once tax and social insurance are deducted. In the thread, opinions clashed between concern that wage hikes would raise labor costs for small businesses and shrink employment, and the view that without raising low wages, the outflow of talent from rural areas won’t stop. Rapid minimum wage increases have drawn criticism before for being “out of step with conditions in rural areas,” and this discussion follows much the same pattern.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Minimum Wage] Even After the Hike, the Gap With Living Costs Remains… Voices Warn of Rural “Low Wages” and Accelerating Talent Outflow“.
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