Real Incomes Have Risen for Some Manufacturing Workers in Japan

Last time, we looked at wages in the manufacturing industry in Japan — they had barely budged over the last two decades. But drill a little deeper, and some manufacturing industry workers have fared a little better:

Nominal wages for part time workers in the manufacturing industry are up around 30 percent since 2001. Prices over the same period have only risen by around two-and-a-half percent, so real wages for part time manufacturing workers are up by around 27.5 percent over the last two decades. Since 2015, they’ve been rising at a fair clip.

Not faring quite so well, but doing pretty well nonetheless, are non-regular workers (those not on a difficult-to-get-fired seishain contract):

That’s the good news. The bad news is, non-regular workers are still paid considerably less than full time regular workers, even though non-regular wages have caught up slightly:

Wages at larger manufacturing companies are considerably better than at smaller ones too:

Although wages at larger manufacturing companies seem more volatile than those at smaller companies, possibly due to greater exposure to export markets and global demand shocks.

The upward pressure on wages for part time and non-regular workers at manufacturing companies doesn’t appear to be caused by increased demand for these workers — the proportion of part time and non-regular workers hasn’t changed much over the past two decades:

So the rise in wages for these workers is more likely caused by the lack of supply of manufacturing workers. Manufacturing jobs are frequently in dark, noisy and dirty environments. Given the choice, many would prefer to work in an office environment.