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The story
According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s preliminary August Monthly Labour Survey released on the 7th, real wages—adjusted for price changes—rose 1.5% year-on-year, marking the 8th consecutive month of gains. Total cash earnings, the nominal wage figure, also rose 3.8% to ¥311,364, meaning growth has topped 3% for 7 straight months—the first such streak since March 1992, or 34 years and 5 months ago. On 5ch, this strong data sparked a clash between those saying “price hikes hurt more than this shows, I don’t feel it” and those arguing “by the numbers, wage growth is outpacing inflation,” with the discussion citing price hikes on plastic wrap and convenience-store rice balls as examples before expanding into a debate over what the real-wage indicator actually means.
According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s preliminary August Monthly Labour Survey (covering businesses with 5 or more employees) released on the 7th, real wages—excluding the effect of price changes—rose 1.5% year-on-year.
This marks the 8th straight month of gains. Thanks to the spread of wage hikes and other factors, nominal wage growth outpaced price growth.
Total cash earnings per employee, the figure representing nominal wages, rose 3.8% to ¥311,364. This is the first time growth has exceeded 3% for 7 consecutive months since March 1992—34 years and 5 months ago.
Source: nikkei.com / Original article here
What people said
They're on pension, welfare, or mooching off their parents, so they're not working — wage growth doesn't apply to them.
Same thing here. They're just putting on the "I'm struggling" act for now, lol
Can't help it — the generations that actually want to buy things keep shrinking because of the aging population.
does that even mean anything? lol
"Excluding" doesn't mean "not factoring it in" — it means "factoring it in and subtracting it," so that's the opposite of what you're thinking.
The gap is definitely widening.
The haves get to keep enjoying this boom going forward, while the have-nots just keep getting squeezed.
Basically, it means people who can invest are the ones making money.
Makes working an actual job feel pointless.
Probably just like the bubble era —
people who are earning keep swimming in more and more cash, while people without money just keep getting left behind by inflation.
If you don't calculate nominal wage growth, you can't calculate real wage growth either —
real wage growth is just nominal wage growth minus price growth.
The rest of the world compares nominal figures.
If you're saying it's meaningless, then that means never comparing Japan to other countries again.
Even if your pay went up by ¥1.5 million, it just gets swallowed by living costs.
Not sure what point you're calling "before," but compared to 2020, prices are up just under 12%.
According to a private think tank's estimate, those subsidies are only suppressing inflation by about 0.5% at most, so even without the subsidies, the 8-month streak of gains apparently wouldn't change.
If we didn't need them in the first place, we wouldn't need the subsidies either —
real wages would actually be growing more than they are now.
Japan's income tax progression works on an excess-bracket basis — only the portion above a certain line gets taxed at the higher rate, so it doesn't actually change that drastically.
Is this board seriously packed with elites all pulling in over ¥10 million a year? lol
Users of this board are 20% genuinely well-off, 30% at the bottom, and 20% who just feel superior in their own heads.
Places like that will just go under from the labor-shortage bankruptcies that are trendy right now, so it's not an issue.
Honestly, worst case I can just bail, so whatever.
They say food prices are up 1.2x or 1.3x, but with lower quality and smaller portions, it's effectively doubled.
The CPI actually does account for shrinkflation normally.
https://www.stat.go.jp/info/today/127.htm
The stuff that isn't rising isn't rising by much at all —
those items are just the ones dragging the average down.
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"Real wages don't even mean anything!!"
Can't say for sure across the board, but that's probably the indicator closest to how life actually feels.
Huge win for the cash-is-king crowd.
The Nikkei's exploding.
Besides, nobody does Orukan these days anyway —
it's all Nikkei now.
Once the "bea" (the annual base pay hike) and regular raises are reflected, shouldn't there be no more wage increases after that?
The month raises happen depends on the company, so statistically there's no choice but to track it every month.
Mine does raises twice a year, in April and October.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Real wages are calculated by subtracting consumer price growth from nominal wage (total cash earnings) growth. Because it’s an average across all households, it doesn’t necessarily match how any individual actually experiences their finances. Many commenters in the thread said “the numbers are improving but life still feels hard” — this reflects both the fact that price increases vary widely by item, and the widening gap between those who hold assets and those who don’t. Changes in demand structure driven by an aging population came up as a factor behind sluggish personal consumption, but the “gap between nominal pay and take-home pay” caused by rising taxes and social insurance premiums — something real wages alone don’t capture — wasn’t explored in much depth within the thread.
*This article is composed of excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyō G) thread “[Good News] Real Wages Rise for 8 Straight Months. Wage Hikes Keep Outpacing Inflation 😇.”
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