I used to teach in Japan and thought the salary was low but now that I’m back in the US and seeing all the ridiculously underpaying jobs people are doing on top of the high cost of living here my mind has changed. I don’t know why people tend to put down ALTs and Eikaiwa teachers in Japan. I’m pretty sure the lowest paid ALT in Japan is probably better off than half of the US population.
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If you are a single person and you don’t have an expensive hobby, then you can just about live off an ALT or eikaiwa salary. It might be hard to save for the future though. The cost of living also depends on where you live.
Like you wouldn’t believe.
The truth is it isn’t a job for people looking to establish a life. It’s a job for upper middle class English speakers that just want to party in Japan for a year or two. Most people do exactly that. People put down ALTs and Eikaiwa workers because of the long, long history of dumb things they have done. Most of it is those that stayed in the job too long and became frustrated or mentally ill. Every few months another one is in the news for drugs, violence or child related crime. It’s gotten to the point that even the news has a “yea, another…..” tone when they report it. I guess it’s a side effect of having zero real requirements.
In the inaka where I live, my shitty salary as a fresh first-year dispatch ALT is well above the average salary in the area. I only have money issues if I’m irresponsible with my money or spend a bunch on travel, but I’ve never had to pinch yennies or deprive myself of basic needs to survive. I haven’t been able to save much (largely because I don’t live very frugally – I definitely could save a bit if I went out less, and will definitely need to start doing so once my student loans get unpaused) but in terms of living comfortably as a single young guy who’s only doing this for a few years I’m perfectly fine.
If I lived in the city though, it’d be a different story. My salary would be about the same, but my cost of living would be significantly higher. Most of the people talking about how bad the ALT salary is are mostly talking about city ALTs, who, if they are not JETs or direct hires, are generally struggling, working multiple jobs, and living as frugally as they can to survive. What is a perfectly livable salary out in the sticks is borderline poverty in Tokyo.
It is- you’d struggle to raise a family, buy a house or pay off university debts. Good for 1-2 years but not for much longer than that
Both are true. Teaching (especially Eikaiwa and ALT) is definitely underpaid. But the lower class wages in America are a joke. If you include inflation I don’t know how half of the population is surviving. Honestly, I think a lot of people are living off of tips or doing multiple gig jobs to survive.
It keeps the lights on but it’s not like you’ll be saving for the future. Just do it for the experience of the job and funding your experience jn Japan.
220,000 yen is now about $1500 a month for an average ALT job. At 35 hours a week it comes out to about $10.70 an hour. So it is basically the same as working retail in the US, but an easier job in a lower cost of living country.
Probably a fair point in comparison to the US but it is also quite a complicated comparison because if how different the cultures are. For example:
– I have heard the minimum earnings for a spouse that Japanese women target is about ¥5m per year, which the average ALT is well short of.
– in Tokyo if you live alone you can live on an ALT wage but you need to realise the average apartment is small to very small compared to the US. Small fridge, no space to cook, limited room for home entertainment, can’t workout at home so need the gym,.etc. It gets to you after a while.
– in Japan you can live on not so much money but what I have found is you will get sideswiped by a big thing which will dent you financially. For example, moving apartment costs a fortune in key money and delivery vans and so on.
– similarly, you live on the other side of the world from your family so that factors into costs. Easily a month’s wage for a trip home and probably double that now. I’m on a lot more than an ALT now but I’m scared that flight costs won’t come back down.
– the ALT salary is on the way down. When I did it about 10 years ago it was like 230,000 a month and that looks generous now. So watch this space for how low it goes.
>Is teaching in Japan really an underpaid job?
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>ALTs and Eikaiwa teachers
I mean this as nicely as possible; *teaching* is a decently paid job in Japan, especially so if you’re at an international school or university. ALT is not really teaching so much as *assisting*. Eikawa teachers perhaps, are a little closer to teaching, however many do not seem to have any control over their resources, lesson planning, or even a proper curriculum, which again detracts from really being full ‘teaching’.
>cost of living
This is what people who go overseas for work need to understand. You cannot compare simple figures from one country to another. CoL plays a much bigger role in how much your salary is ‘worth’. Even as an expat myself, if I were to compare figures to figures, I earn a shockingly low amount to my home country Australia. But comparing the CoL, I’m living and saving much, much more than I ever could in Australia.
And Australia is considered one of the better domestic teaching industries among developed nations. I was certainly living and saving *comfortably* back home, but the sheer spending power I have here as an expat international teacher is a whole other level.
The pay is low but the cost of living is not bad.
Even the marines are on Food stamps
I have seen single mothers living with salaries that are in the same range as eikaiwa teachers.
You won’t have a beautiful life, but you won’t starve and if you get sick, you won’t die. Your rent is never going to go up (it may even go down if you stay long enough) and food prices remained more or less stable for decades, this year being the painful exception. You are also not going to be fired on the spot unless you rape a coworker in the office in front of everyone. You may even be able to save some money.
In the US, the bottom scale is not enough to afford the basic cost of living unless you live with roommates. You better never get sick or have an accident. The average rent went up by 15% in 2021 alone and food prices increase every year and spiked this year but minimum wages seems to be adjusted once in a decade. In at-will states you can be fired at any time for no reason and without notice. Let’s not even talk about retirement.
If your only skill in life is speaking English, you will be much better off teaching in Japan than doing a retail/food industry job in the US.
I’m making the same here as I theoretically would have made in a comparable teaching job in the US… except 1) I say “theoretically” because I was trapped in an adjunct position and wasn’t able to get a full time position (because people never leave once they get full time and we had about 5x as many adjuncts as full timers), and 2) I have healthcare, affordable housing, and other additional benefits here in Japan that I didn’t have at home. I also come from a chronically underpaid state when it comes to teaching, so it might be more dramatic for someone from a different state/country. For me, the situation here is better in basically every way compared to back home.
It really depends on where you live. 250k a month is poverty in Tokyo. But in rural areas it could go pretty far.
Where I live, the average salary seems to be 180-200k.
Brah, teaching in J in the 80’s? The owner in the eikaiwa provided you with the suitcase to put your salary in (¥) to help you carry it to the 居酒屋。
The pay is nice the first year, but afterwards not so much when the taxes and pensions start to settle in. It’s definitely not a career to raise a family and/or retire off of by itself.
Yes, it is low and it’s pointless to spin otherwise
However, it’s better to be poor in Japan than in the USA
Being in the USA, you would have a chance at getting a job with higher salary where you earn/save more even with inflation. These jobs require **marketable skills** however and your average ALT/Eikawa worker lacks these skills. Thus, they won’t be able to find a decent job in the USA if they move back. This is why I suggest to get your portfolio/resume in order with more than just “teach “what color do you like” to Japanese kids” on the resume
I think the problem is that a lot of the stories you hear about teaching/living in Japan come from people who lived/live in Tokyo. While the pay might be terrible for living there, in other places it’s not so bad. I think people are overly dramatic about it.
I think the dirty secret that a lot of people won’t talk about is how Japan doesn’t have much opportunity in general. Nobody is coming here to make tons of money unless they’re from a developing country. *Especially now that the yen has tanked.* Even the programmers and whatnot can make way more money elsewhere. And don’t get me started on if you’re a woman. It doesn’t matter how good your Japanese is or how well you fit in. You’re not going far up that ladder. Gender equality here is really low.
I can’t speak for most ESL teachers in the US, but at my school the starting wage for a new teacher is about $49.75 an hour. I’m in my 3rd year at this school (been teaching ESL since 2014 though), and I make about $52 an hour. I also get my tenureship starting in January along with a $5/hour raise.
However, my wife and I are planning to relocate to Japan for ALT/eikaiwa work. I love working with adults soooooo much, and the rare times I do get Japanese students they have always been amazing! That’s one of the reasons I agreed to japan. I know the salaries will be lower, but our cost of living will be significantly better. I figure if we both make about 250k yen a month, we will be able to save enough to put a down payment on a Japanese house (looking in Saitama pref) in about 5 years. Here even if my wife got a job, we would be able to save very little. Since 2017 my rent has gone from $1600 to $2100 and it’s very hard to live in California right now. I’m looking forward to working in Japan, but hopefully with adults and not kids.
I imagine that you’re right when you say that ALTs and eikaiwa teachers make more money in Japan than they would doing similar (read: no qualifications required) work in their home country. If you compare, for example, someone working in a call center making just above minimum wage and someone working as an ALT or eikaiwa teacher, the teacher is probably financially better off and is likely having a better work experience overall. After all, the reason they came to teach in Japan is often because they *want* to work in Japan, so by the very nature of the job, they are doing something they want to be doing and getting paid more than the call center employee.
I would also imagine that a lot of people working in other countries in other minimum-wage types jobs would be more than happy to get paid as much as teachers in Japan get paid.
So are teachers really underpaid for what they do? No, not really – but they do have other disadvantages that make the job less than desirable for a lot of people, especially long-term.
Mainly, this is because the companies they work for find ways to limit how much they can get paid and go right up to the edge of, and sometimes over, labor law to make sure their profit margin stays fat and the teacher salaries stay thin.
– no raises
– few paid holidays, and no increases in the number of paid holidays
– no opportunities to upskill or advance
– no bonuses or other benefits that are routinely given to Japanese employees
– limited contract renewals
– nearly no chance at permanent employment and no job security
– their visa can be put in danger if they push back against unfair labor practices, workplace abuse, or even just by questioning the educational policies.
It’s not uncommon for companies (esp smaller ones) to blatantly break labor law and get away with it because the teachers are afraid to protest as it would mean not getting paid, possibly not finding another job, and put their visa in danger.
While it is true that workers in low-level jobs (in wherever your home country may be) face many of these issues as well, they won’t get threatened with deportation if they get fired, AND they can always look elsewhere outside their current industry to find another job. Teachers in Japan usually cannot do anything but teach, which really limits their ability to find a new job. So those two things – no job security and chance of deportation – are THE biggest issues teachers face, and are what really make the job really quite precarious.
In other words, people feel they have no othter choice than to put up with abuse, shitty contract conditions, and really, truly BAD educational policies. Long term, this is not a desirable situation.
I can’t remember exactly but according to the ministry of Labor, the average salary for every working person of all ages in all of Japan was about 4.4M. Starting ALTs get like 2.8-3.0M ish so it is definitely below average. The highest paid Eikaiwa and direct BOE hires may get up to 3.6 or maybe just under 4.0M a year so even the ceiling is a bit low in that respect.
I’ve lived in Japan for about 20 years – if you are interested in money then English teaching is not the career for you.
If you are interested in having a flexible working life where it is possible to have a pretty good lifestyle then English teaching is not too bad.
In Japan, you will meet a lot of people who proclaim to have been making huge money in their formerly lucrative careers back home. Often these same people struggle to explain why they left those jobs, came to Japan and then decided to stay here. Just saying.
Totally depends on where you are teaching. Uni gig? You’re prob doing pretty okay. Eikaiwa, check to check, but there are some place that pay okay as well. JET, all around a better situation than Eikaiwa, but you can’t do it forever.
Hell yes. The money is very poor.
It’s low paying but it’s not underpaying. What does an ALT do that’s worth more money than they get?
**TL;DR: -** Legitimate international schools are, for now, still pretty good pathways for teaching in Japan, but you actually need to be a credentialed teacher with experience to get those kinds of jobs.
Now, if you’re talking about ALT / or Eikaiwa “teaching”:
Just because pay *is* bad in the US doesn’t mean pay *isn’t* bad in Japan. **The pay is bad. Period.**
“JuSt CoMpArE tHe CoSt Of LiViNg!” is a ridiculous cope when trying to talk down how unforgivably shit salaries and conditions are for teaching in Japan. Even most of the shitty dispatch and eikaiwa companies require at least a bachelor’s degree which, if you’re from the US at least, is still fucking expensive to acquire. Now that the yen is so weak and the dollar so strong it’s only exacerbated any issues people might have with repaying student loan debt from here.
If you don’t have any student loan debt, you’re still not really going to be able to save *that* much even *if* you do live fairly frugally. I hate when the topic of discussion turns to “lifestyles” when the core issue is still the **egregious fucking salary.** You can’t save what isn’t there to begin with, so stop changing the subject.
Also, you have no idea what your working conditions will be like because there is absolutely **zero** standardization across the industies. You may or may not have a very “easy” job with few classes or you could have a very “difficult” one with a ridiculous number of classes. You also have no idea (with regards to ALT-ing) whether or not you will be expected to be the lead teacher or not which can exponentially compound the difficulty of the work.
There are also so many other factors to take into consideration: What level is your Japanese? Are you a woman? Are you a BIPoC? Do you have a disability? Etc. Things that make living in Japan much more difficult than it might be in your home country. Because if you’re not already a born and raised, healthy, Japanese person you are an “other” here and that perception is likely not going to change (in our lifetime.)
what people fail to mention Is that new grads in japan wont get paid more than most alts, in fact they will most likely be paid LESS.
the medium income stats people regurgitate is only for the 50 and 60 yo boomer gens who benifited from the after war economic bubble.
you will never get paid as much as these folks forget it. 20万 after taxes is what i have a month is actually ok, thats what most folks in their 20 and 30s live with. I support a stay at home wife with that mind you.
if you want to make more, then either program code or something. most of us will never get into the decent paying 1st tier japanese companies just give up
im a 29yo trIlingual salesman in japan with near perfect japanese, i know what im talking about
i have more passports and languages than I know what to do with but no markatable skills. thats the reality on the ground
Is America really that bad? Everyone I know living in America lives in a nice house, has a boat, cars etc.
I know there are people who struggle to make ends meet, but could you really say it’s half the population? I just have anecdotal evidence. Maybe someone else could clue me in. I thought life in America was great.
The supply of ALTs in Japan vastly outweighs demand, so the low pay combined with virtually nonexistent barriers to entry is entirely appropriate due to basic economic principles.
No: teachers in Japan are not “underpaid”. They are paid fairly for what it takes to get the job, and relative to the vast competition.
I have my own small Eikaiwa. No staff. Just me. After expenses I take home around 65man per month. Of course it comes with its risks, but for the last 8 years it has been around that amount.
If you come to korea you actually make more money as a teacher, because your housing is fully covered and bills are pennies. But Japan is Japan 😁 i make more in Korea and still wanna teach in Japan.
America is notorious for low pay too. The minimum wage in Australia is higher than ET in Japan.
Cost of living is low and the pay is moderate. So it’s a good life. Sometimes you get perks like housing allowance or travel expense in addition to the standard things. If you side hustle on top of that (eikaiwa, online freelance, etc) you can start making decent money.
ALTs with JET can get just under ¥4m per year. If you do some side work you can probably push that to 5m without too much stress. Obv depends on your situation, goals, CO
I think others have covered it, but there are ways to make decent money. Running my own modest school and doing part time work at a local private middle/high school landed me a solidly middle class income. A few years ago I made maybe 8 million yen. I’ve backed off on private teaching a bit and my take home has suffered for it, but if I were to go for a full-time job at the HS I’d make a pretty decent salary- I just don’t know if I can stomach a ‘normal’ schedule after years of free time and flexibility. Cost of living definitely does matter, too- outside of travel and big-ticket items, money goes farther here than in the States in my opinion.
Staying as an Eikaiwa employee or a typical ALT is not a great way to make money, but you can use those positions to springboard you into something a little more lucrative.
Depends. It pays quite bit better than being a kindergarten teacher in England, and rent here is also lower (and would take up most of my money in the old country.) so I’m much better off, even without a giant pay increase. Life is much more comfortable here .
As a single person, teaching here is fine
But as a head of two person household, the full time annual salary is low that you are eligible for government support (if you are earning below 3 million you can get ” teate”)
Just let that sink in.
It’s far below average and in some areas it’s barely making it by. Certainly you can not have a family on teaching income alone.
The industry as far as westerners are concerned is almost dead. Now many schools are choosing to go straight to south east Asia, India and other cheap labor countries for thier teachers. Quality does not matter anymore nor was it ever any good to begin with.
The ESL teaching job market back home in Canada pays about the same as private high school jobs in Japan. However, the jobs back home are part-time or contract work. Here I’ve got more job security and more discretionary income because the cost of living is lower.
It looks like Australia has similar conditions – high salary for ESL instructors but crazy high cost of living.
For a professional, it is a poor paying job
For a loser, who couldn’t last one day in a professional job, it is ok.
Your average Eikawa monkey would only be able to work at Wal Mart if they went back home.
This touches that oh-so-icky subject of what qualifies as “underpaid”.
Most posters here will tell you that someone with a Bachelor’s degree- which is the minimal purely for the visa- should be making the equivalent of $30k~$50k a year. Which definitely isn’t happening with these jobs. In fact, you’re going to be lucky to make that much money even back in other countries like America. There’s a reason why r/antiwork has become so popular on Reddit.
Now for my own personal story… even after graduating college, I was unable to ever find a job in my degree, which is a science degree (yes, I’m another statistic). The second-highest paying job I ever had, even when I DID get a raise, only paid $12.50/hr. Which if you do the math… ALT salaries are still HIGHER than that. Of course, I was also out in the middle of nowhere. I expect most people here come from Big Cities and are used to having higher paychecks… often at the cost of higher living expenses as well. My whole time in japan, I’ve never lived in one of the Big Cities, so the cost of living has always been low- try a 2LDK for about 6万円, including utilities.
Yes, it is.
It’s typically the sweat shop of the education field.
And depending on how your colleagues see you, the mistreatment, and jealousy will only add to your woes.
The virus was a godsend to many full-time employees because it lightened their workloads from 8 classes a day to half, or just over half.
The virus also gives the scheming workplaces whether it be dispatch, boe, or eikaiwa an excuse to lower salaries.
Immigration should go back to the minimum of 3 million yen rule for visa purposes. This way salaries would go up, instead of continuing to go down since workplaces will have to pay this to keep people working for their shit companies, or boes.
With the rising cost of everything in the coming months, and years, I would consider being an ELT to be on the *seuil de pauvreté*.
And as a foreigner, nobody cares for you. There are even fellow foreigners who want ill things to happen to you just because you aren’t Japanese.
Under-paid assumes you’re not getting what you’re worth.
Objectively I think it’s fair to say that ~$2000 USD a month (~$24,000 USD a year with limited holidays/conditions) is a low-paid, entry-level salary.
Is it under-paid? I dunno! For many people it’s their first job, they’ve got a generalist degree and (potentially) it’s the best offer they’ve got. On this basis it’s ‘about right’ as the real win is getting to hang-out in Japan while getting paid a bit of a stipend.
That said, salaries have gone down over the past 20-30 years and it’s getting to a point where places are hiring E2 speakers purely as a cost-cutting measure (because westerners of all races will not take the jobs). On this basis, the salary’s becoming a bit of a joke I reckon.