Pay Raises.

27 comments

1. Normal range? Approximately 0 yen.

   Edit: To be fair, this is not limited to English teaching.

2. For what jobs? For an ALT the general maximum raise is 0.00¥ per year.

3. I get a 1-2 man/month raise every year until I’m 55 apparently.

4. Depends entirely on your profession and employer.

   It is common for ALTs / Eikaiwa workers to receive zero increases, or very modest ones (1,000~2,000 yen / month, say.)

   Some nicer eikaiwa schools might offer bigger bumps (say 5,000 / months)

   K12 and Uni teachers can probably reasonable expect anywhere between 5,000~10,000 / month increase, and possibly even more when younger. (And that increase is bigger than it seems since they tend to also receive bonuses.)

5. 1.5万 monthly increase every year. Private JHS/SHS. Bonus rises in calculation with new yearly salary. Yearly increase drops to 5,000 yen while 60-65 years old.

6. I’m a gen ed home room teacher and we receive bonuses twice a year and a pay raise of about ¥10,000. The salary is higher than average for Japan so I can’t complain!

7. I’m getting a 3,000 yen per month raise on my second year contract as a direct hire ALT

   Hope this information is helpful.

8. Back in the day I started on ~280k a month and finished on ~330k a month with an eikaiwa. This was also linked to performance (i.e. I had ‘outstanding’ ratings every year). I think this was about the cap for their salaries.

   Nova (where I worked for a few months before moving) did something similar. We started on ~280k (I got ~290k as I’ve got a masters) and this increased by ~10k a year until death. I remember doing the the maths before going out (naively thinking it was a job for life / career) and thinking ‘wow so I’ll save some decent cash and be well setup if I’m here until I’m 60/70’. IMO when you understand that’s not how eikaiwa works, your life becomes a lot easier.

   Universities are a bit of a myth IMO. I have a master of TESOL and temporarily worked for one but it paid little more than eikaiwa and it was on a short-term, contractual basis (whereas the eikaiwa guaranteed me 5 days a week, 8 hours a day). I’ll get downvoted for this, but being an ‘English tutor’ isn’t the panacea that some think it is IMO (i.e. I moved towns on the basis that I’d be working part-time at a uni… I took a full-time eikaiwa job instead after a few months).

9. Don’t worry laws and policies hardly ever affect foreign contract workers. lower ranking japanese wont be getting a huge raise too though. only officials, executives, etc.

10. Unless you are a seishaiin, then the average pay raise is 0.

    In fact I know a lot of companies that pay less each year.

11. Wow. Haha.

12. Been with interac for over 10 years, since my first year i’ve had a 22500yen raise on my base salary total since starting. 500yen, 2000yen, 5000yen, 10000yen then another 5000yen after having my first child. I usually ask them in March about a raise and sometimes i’ve been lucky to get it.

13. For eikaiwa or ALT work? A raise? Good luck. Those salaries have been *falling* since the 90s.

14. We don’t know what kind of job you have.

    The only thing we know about you is that you’re in Japan and a slacker.

15. 5,000 a month increase next year for me. I know most people get zero, but totally not worth the pay increase. I’ll be searching for a new job outside of teaching.

16. I received a ¥10000 raise per month with kids duo after a year and a few months with them. That’s probably not the norm though. Before that, I never received a raise working 4 years at a preschool.

17. Left one job, got a 20% pay raise at the next job.

    I’ve done that about 10 times in my career

18. Unless you are a seishaiin, 540 is close to 0 so that’s about right. Don’t expect any raises realistically. Was working as an ALT, and got nothing. Switched to an engineering job, so I get about a 15000JPY increase a month and a bonus once every year. Unless you have a worthless degree, and 0 skills, just don’t do this job in Japan.

19. I started at 295000 per month, got bumped up to 300000 my second year, and 315000 my third year.

    ALT dispatched to a private elementary school. No bonuses, but also no reduced pay over school holidays.

20. The last two jobs I had, I got a raise of 10,000 per month.

21. After tenure I started getting 5% a year until I reach the cap at 12 million a year. They slightly raise the cap every 10 years when MEXT makes their changes.

22. Take what you can get I guess but even when I worked at cheap eikawas they gave me a bigger raise than 540.

    This year I got a really good deal.

    I can rent an apartment in the companies name (any apartment I want, so there’s no Leopalace deal here) And my rent will be taken out of my pay. The raise I got was 20,000 yen per month for the rent. So, Im still paying same amount of tax as last year but will have 20,000 yen extra a month to spend on whatever, so thats pretty sweet.

23. We’re a medium-sized privately owned eikaiwa school (one location, three full-time teachers).

    We give pay rises in the 5,000-10,000 yen a month range for teachers renewing with us.

24. I actually did get a raise from Interac once after I unsuccessfully applied to a trainer vacancy.

25. I’m Never teaching in Japan. Financial suicide.

26. Welcome to Japan!

27. Japan. The land of the rising sun and falling wages.