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© KYODOJapanese government urges businesses to raise wages on par with price hikes
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Rocket Lees
“Urges.”
That one word tells us all we need to know how effective this request will be.
Spitfire
The LDP cares not at all about the people it governs and gets it lucrative salaries and benefits from.
Urge.........the term has become so Japanese.
Lip service at its highest level.
Tom Doley
These urges should not be reported. It'll be forgotten in a fortnight.
browny1
Marrying wage rises to price rises - reflecting the real living costs including food & utilities - would necessitate an immediate minimum increase of 6+%.
Realistically it needs to be 50% - ie a base rate moving from ¥1000/hr to ¥1,500/hr.
Without such an increase, mediocrity is the best that Japan can aim for for it's future societies.
In_japan
What kind of logic is this? Goods prices are already up by certain percent, wage hike will further increase the price. Why don't govt increases the tax bracket instead, since they have increased the consumption tax from 2 to 10%?
Chico3
I'll believe when I see it in my account.
Seigi
Are you kidding me? While making people do nothing because of Covid-19 measures?
Yubaru
2 freaking %??? He has got to be kidding! 2% would hardly cover the increased taxes already heaped upon the people when the consumption tax was raised, and let's not even begin to talk about the nearly 40% loss in value of the yen to the dollar, making energy costs that much higher as well.
Next, the only people who would ever see the increase are government employees (our tax money again!) and large businesses that employ the "sei-shain" and not the contracted or PT workers, who are either hourly waged or set monthly amounts.
Even the damn "minimum" wage has barely budged for over 20 years.
2% is a slap in the face!
Yubaru
Mediocrity has been the name of the game for a generation already!
SDCA
Just like how they urged companies to adopt Premium Friday or Work from Home policies?
Blacklabel
Yep all that “urging” gonna go nowhere.
TokyoJoe
Don't worry, you won't be seeing a 2% rise, it will be nothing as an urge isn't worth the paper it's written on.
BertieWooster
Raise the wages so that we can get more taxes please!
Think of your poor lawmaker trying to subsist on a meagre salary and only two bonuses per year!
David Brent
Never gonna happen.
I have been at my company for seven years. I earn ¥9000 more than when I joined.
The new hires this year start on ¥167,000 per month, before taxes etc..
This is at a well-known, well-regarded Japanese electronics manufacturer.
dan
Urge .... Hilarious as usual the LDP!!
antifun
Have they urged them during the steak dinners or during kyabakura?
TokyoJoe
Being as salary reviews are performed before April 1st in Japan. Even if anything does come of this you will be waiting until April 2023 to see any change. (Not that it will)
Kobe White Bar Owner
All these urges give me an urge!
Paul14
Meanwhile, in the real world my gig economy friend has just had his hourly pay cut to minimum wage.
Laguna
In_Japan, I've been here a long time. The consumption tax rate has been increased from 0% - that's what it was when I arrived.
Paul14
Do these politicians not understand that businesses exist solely to generate as much profit as possible for their shareholders, or owners? Therefore, an urge is worth nothing. Try legislating instead. Force all companies to increase wages by 2 percent annually or face fines, and imprisonment. Then, we can believe you really want change and are determined to make it happen.
James
Kishida's urgenomics hasn't been very successful in make any actual changes.
藤原
Business will have the urge to laugh at the Japanese governments statement.
OssanAmerica
Unless it is made law, it will never happen.
Lindsay
I’ve been reading this same headline every year since the mid-2000’s and nothing has changed for the workers. The only thing that did was Abe gave corporations major tax cuts which he ‘urged’ companies to pass on as salary increases. It never happened, of course. Just more lip service from the LDP. It’ll never change!
Nadrew
Increase the minimum wage to ¥1500/hr.
marcels
English teachers hourly rate of 2500 yen per hour hasn't changed since the late 70s
Jonathan Prin
I think I shall change country for my salary increase.
Oups, I did it some time ago.
Still, only salary changed when employer changed.
Increase during last 5 years is also so poor in my home country, exccept for all the minimum wages and allowances.
I would not expect in Japan an increase taming the inflation, so each year you are gonna lose pricing power.
Need to move if you think you are worth it.
kaimycahl
Urge??? Sounds like a plead to me and not a "DEMAND"!
CarlosTakanakana
Japan needs to stop printing money and raise mortgage rates. Too much cash in the economy.
kurisupisu
This isn’t news when nothing ever happens and that is ( in my lifetime) Japan’s fate
buchailldana
As a one man show should I try pass on the on the extra costs.
I'm good case eat the small modded.
Much better hold will.
buchailldana
More good to suck up the small losses better for everyone.
But thats just my situation.
I really understand how we are all affected differently
proxy
Refreshing to hear that from a government. Inflation is over 8% in Canada and their government is urging employers NOT to raise wages.
kohakuebisu
I expect this to be a new low for the word "urge". That's assuming that you make something already meaningless even more meaningless.
tamanegi
Never going to happen.
juminRhee
Browny1:
Wages & salaries should be pegged to inflation. That should be a no-brainer. Yes there will be some pull and tug, but it will reach equilibrium.
kyushubill
J Gov: Hey, bussinesses, raise wages.
Bussinesses: Sorry, what? Can't hear you. Did you say "more slave wages"? Sure OK.
Guy-Gin
Marcels : I think you’ll find it actually went up to around ¥8000 per hour and was quite common in the bubble 80s. Then reality hit……
Jind
In USA, Government says inflation is around 9% but price increases in grocery stores are from 30% to 300%.
Totally not in touch with reality.
oyatoi
The false promises they have no intention of honoring and all the stonewalling will only stop when the mandate of heaven is withdrawn. When a public no longer prepared to serve as accomplices after the fact finally decides to cast off the heavy chains and demand a changing of the guard.
Yubaru
Which would mean little to nothing for people who live in Tokyo, and on the other hand, would put countless numbers of businesses in numerous prefectures OUT of business, because they couldnt hire anyone to work for them.
Minimum wages are not the same throughout Japan, which is a large problem, with the disproportionate incomes, between Tokyo workers and those in places like Ishigaki, in Okinawa, or the entire prefecture of Okinawa for that matter, as raising it to that number would just about double, what is now the minimum wage here.
Aly Rustom
urge= lack of true leadership
Desert Tortoise
Inflation is measured across a range of goods, not just groceries and fuel. In fact food and fuel are not included in the normal inflation calculation because their prices rise and fall cyclically every year in a predictable fashion. Food is always cheapest in the summer when freshly harvested fruits and vegetables are heading to the market and most expensive in the winter and early spring when most places are too cold to grow anything so any fresh fruits and veggies are imported from warmer places raising their price. Every year, same thing. The cyclic nature of their annual rise and fall in prices skews the underlying inflation information.
I don't know where you are shopping but I haven't seen anything increase in price 300%.
Ercan Arisoy
Clearly enough, Ukraine crisis and its implications related to oil and gas, has changed the plans of many countries. Germany, for instance, had decided too early and now, doesn't know how to face the coming winter with an unreliable business partner like Russian Federation. And this issue is so important that it can even influence the fate of Ukrainian war.
Speed
Quit urging and start legislating. That's your job.
JeffLee
It cares a lot more than the corporations and their wage-suppression policies.
Desert Tortoise
It it the job of any level of government to legislate wage increases? In a market economy? Just asking. A minimum wage is defendable with good economics because below a certain wage, workers are forced to use public assistance, effectively forcing the rest of the taxpaying public to pay their workers enough to make up for their pinche small wage to allow their workers to survive. But legislating across the board wage increases for all business is not defendable for a market economy. Doing so will accelerate inflation as producers raise prices to pay for the mandatory wage increase. The net effect is zero, the additional increase in prices will eat up any wage increase.
Yubaru
I guarantee that no one in the Japanese government used the word "urge", ever!
If you want to find a reason it gets overly used, you have to talk with someone else.
Sven Asai
It’s not their task to interfere or intervene in the wages. That’s something the employers and employees or their representatives have to do. Politicians should only set a minimum framework for example the lower or upper limits. Of course they can also urge or demand something, but that’s of course more something like a non binding recommendation or personal wish or opinion.
fxgai
Ummm, which God is going to present us with stable price increases of (no more than) about 2 percent?
Fixed increase in prices, fixed increase in wages… does all the fixing of prices sound either realistic or desirable to anybody?
Central planning….
Indeed, Japan’s economy is just Japanified, as it has been for decades now.
Wtf. Profits belong to the shareholders, of course wages are a cost. These clowns are living in Tokyo Disneyland.
fxgai
Is that so.
Japan’s corporate rate today is barely under 30%, leaving it higher than the G7, G20 and OECD averages, on the uncompetitive side.
So it was hardly even a thing that Abe had done at all.
Japan’s economy needs much more than just tax rate cuts to get going, it needs much broader reforms to make it a freer and more dynamic economy.
painkiller
Japanese government urges businesses to raise wages on par with price hikes
No one forced any workers to accept a particular wage.