In California, fast food workers will get US$20 minimum wage under new deal between labor and the industry. Meanwhile, the minimum wage in Tokyo is US$7.56. The Marriott Hotel in Kyoto charges 180,000yen per night but pays its staff ~1000 yen per hour. Jiminto has crushed worker pay and there seems to be no push back from the voters at all.
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Angry r/japanlife sub users incoming:)
You can certainly try living in CA with that wage and see how it works out 😀
You might be shocked to discover that Japan wages aren’t typically paid in USD
It’s certainly frustrating. While I do think you get a better bang for your buck in Japan overall (compared to the West, in my opinion) and inflation isn’t as bad as it is elsewhere, it’s definitely quite challenging to save anything when you’re making literally 1050 an hour while living in Tokyo. I’m not even talking about Minato or something but even in Kanagawa. You’re not going to be saving much.
When I first came to Japan I was making around 1600 an hour and it definitely took me about a couple of years to really start seriously saving anything. It wasn’t until I hit around 2000 yen an hour that I was able to save up a considerable amount.
Regardless, as I said, at least the quality of what I’m paying for is generally very good compared to other places. An $8 box of cereal in North America and insanely expensive rent, despite the $15/hour minimum wage, isn’t very helpful.
Then throw in the high inflation and Low yen, and it costs a kidney to buy anything that’s manufactured outside (talking about pc parts)
Wages here are too low. I work in a part time job but am moving to a full time position soon with a good salary. I can do this because I’m bilingual and have experience. All the people I work with at my part time job can’t. They all live at home cause they can’t rent, and don’t have time or money to get the skills they need. Huge numbers of people in Japan go into the low wage market and never really get out of it. But hey a Big Mac is cheaper so no problem right? /s
Japan is much much cheaper than California
It’s almost like the living cost in every country is different. If you compare Japan’s wages to less developed countries like Indonesia (where I’m from), it’s like 5x as high. But I wouldn’t need ¥200,000 per month to survive if I was in Indonesia, I’d need only about 1/5th of it.
Wages is not everything. I rather get minimum wage in Japan than in California.
US National minimum wage is still $7.25.
So thats around ~40k a year, which is slightly above poverty level in California.
Try living on minimum wage in cali and paying off student loans, monthly health insurance, car insurance, gas, rent, electric, internet, phone, food. 🙂 I’d gladly take minimum wage in Japan vs. California.
Edit: I guess I need to clarify here, but japan, just using Tokyo as an example, offers much more affordable rent compared to the US & you don’t need a car and food is cheaper. You could still live in the outskirts or at a sharehouse w/ a private room in the 23 wards or outside Tokyo and you can still have that big city life (yeah ofc you will be penny pinching on minimum wage though).
That lifestyle of working a baito or full time on minium wage and being able to get by in a big city is impossible in the states (NYC, LA, SF…) unless you have some roomates or if you live in a crack shack.
Yes, but your comparison isn’t exactly fair. The cost of living in much of California is also much higher than Japan. In my home state Indiana, the minimum wags is just over 7 bucks, making it more equal to Japan. Plus in Indiana you go broke from paying for healthcare.
So yes, Japan has a problem, but it is still better than the US (in general) in terms of pay. Plus here you don’t go broke paying for healthcare.
For the size of the economy, yes they are a disgrace. Whenever people choose to work in Japan it’s always people justifying lower salary with cultural experience. It’s awful that we can’t have both.
That being said, comparing US salaries with just about any country will be a misrepresentation of how far your money goes. In the US you need to pay for everything, and a lot for it too. Minimum salary of US would let you live as a high earner in probably the majority of countries in the world.
min. wages are actually quite low across East Asia. HK is HKD40 (USD5.11), Taiwan is NTD176 (USD 5.5), South Korea 9860 won (USD7.8). Would be nice to see them go a bit higher.
American self destroyed value of the dollar is a disgrace
US$20 in California is like JPY200 in Japan if you factor in healthcare, transportation, taxes, housing and energy costs.
In Japan you have (a decent) health insurance when you work full time and the prices are completely different than in California. You often dont need a car and can rely on the public transportation system (affordable clean and safe).
this is so dumb 😂
This is such an ignorant post.
Wages aren’t even that high across the US.
Federal minimum is $7.25. $2.13 if you get tips.
According to some on JapanLife you can get huge pizzas for $1 which can a family of four for a week. So, pros and cons I guess.
You understand how cost of living works right? On like 30k a year you can finance a home.
Wage inflation in turn causes inflation which hurts everyone and goes back to square one
America “we need a higher minimum wage”
Also America “this inflation I unacceptable”
It also costs 3-5x as much to live in california. Even 200k usd in california have a worse life style than 4M jpy in Tokyo.
Tokyo is a lot more livable with minimum wage in comparison to all major cities in the US.
While costs in Japan are cheaper (so there’s _a bit less_ wage pressure), I do agree that I would hope for wages to be better for service workers and hotel staff. I think people sometimes don’t fully conceptually how much you’re scraping by at 160k JPY/month. The 50k JPY sharehouse appartment exists, but it’s … quite far from downtown.
And of course if you just try to work in cheaper areas of the country, the wages go way down to compensate. I knew somebody working as city hall staff on Iki and they were making something like 140k JPY/month.
r/lostredditor
I mean, as you have noted, it was a recent thing that happened in the states.
On top of that, a lot of other places in the states still don’t have that high of a minimum wage.
Now pair that against a country that is still growing and going to a mess of different problems. It will take a while for them to balance that out and then they will have time to think about it. At least from my view.
The current exchange rate makes the comparison look far worse than it actually is.
I mean, yeah? Wages have been bad for decades. Did you not research this before you came here?
^^^why do people compare different economies, and try and apply different economical lifestyles that don’t apply. Hey let me take these rotten grapes (California) and apply them to this corrupted strawberry (Japan). I left America mostly because of the marijuana and the Arizona California border issues. The California workers would travel across state borders because the rent was cheaper. This led to a vast majority of Californians being able to pay for apartments and houses in the Arizona area, I called home. They literally collapsed the housing market in my area, so that I had to move in with my brother just to cover rent. I was getting paid 15$ an hour as a assistant manager. I looked at prices before making the jump to Japan, I could afford a house on the opposite coast.
The Marriott hotel in Kyoto is charging 180,000 a night because they are price gouging after COVID border controls, together with all other hotels. People earning minimum wage are not staying at the Marriott hotel in Kyoto. It’s irrelevant.
Take the comparison out, Japan’s wages suck, wages do not match inflation, and have stagnated for years.
Despite job hopping being frowned upon, it’s the fastest way for people to increase their salary.
I know this month is when the min wages are going to be updated, but I have no hope.
You can buy ramen in Tokyo for ¥800/$5.40, but it costs ¥4400/$30 with tax and tip in San Francisco.
You can go to the doctor in Tokyo and get multiple x-rays, and treatment as I did last week for ¥5500/$37, or pay probably ¥300,000/$2000 in the US.
Obviously the cost of living is so different, so salaries are as well. I feel people can have a better life these days in Tokyo than in San Francisco
Wow it’s almost like Japan isn’t the USA.
Japan has been locked in 3% inflation forever. Some most Americans are experiencing inflation index of 9% with some segments, groceries, experiencing up to 20% inflation in last 4 years. Healthcare, is a sticker on a rocket ship in america, but is largely priced regulated and subsidized in japan. @Op, i suggest you start reading global financial editorials. You are missing out a lot of key variables.
Why does everyone use USD when talking about Japanese prices and wages on here? Will you still use USD to make your case if the yen increases in value again?
According to Numbeo’s living cost comparison:
>Consumer Prices in Tokyo are 36.7% **lower** than in Los Angeles, CA (without rent)
>
>Consumer Prices Including Rent in Tokyo are 48.2% **lower** than in Los Angeles, CA)
>
>Rent Prices in Tokyo are 63.5% **lower** than in Los Angeles, CA
>
>Restaurant Prices in Tokyo are 62.1% **lower** than in Los Angeles, CA
>
>Groceries Prices in Tokyo are 23.6% **lower** than in Los Angeles, CA
>
>Local Purchasing Power in Tokyo is 19.9% **lower** than in Los Angeles, CA
Some examples from their site:
1. A meal at McDonald’s in Tokyo is $5.11, but is $11 in LA.
2. A 330ml bottle of water in Tokyo is $0.79, but $2.28 in LA
3. Basic utilities are ~$184 in LA, but ~$154 in Tokyo
4. Rent for a 1-bedroomed apartment in the city centre is ~$2,598 in LA vs ~$934 in Tokyo.
5. Rent for a 1-bedroomed apartment outside the city centre is ~$2,109 in LA vs ~$563 in Tokyo.
So if we take the differences of number 5 and number 3 and sum them, we get $1,576. Assuming 21 working days in a month, that’s $75 extra a day that you need to live in LA. Dividing that by 8 hours, that’s an additional $9.38 per hour you need to earn. Adding that to your $7.56, you’d be at almost $17. That doesn’t include food costs, which is a slightly murkier topic since some stuff costs more in Japan and some stuff costs less, but of the big spends, it seems like you need a lot more to live somewhere like LA. Yes, I know LA isn’t all of CA, but I had to pick somewhere, and it’s probably the nearest large population hub to compare with Tokyo.
So, the Generation Z woman does sugar dating and man does illegal part-time jobs in Japan.
I make half the salary that I did in California. My standard of life in Japan is infinitely better.
In California, I was paying $1800/month for a crappy tiny studio apartment and I was still an hour drive from the city. I was paying ~$100/month for shitty cable internet that was slow and cut out constantly. I had insurance but I still had to pay $2500 for a root canal.
In Japan, I pay 60,000 yen for a 5 room house 10~15 minutes walking from the main station in my city. I pay 5,000 yen for 10 gigabit fiber internet that has never once gone down. I had a root canal done for 90,000 and that was because I paid 80,000 out of pocked for the ceramic crown. I had a CT scan done for 3600 yen.
Japan isn’t on America’s or western Europe’s level, economically. Rather, it’s a LCOL/low wage country, more akin to Poland or Thailand.
OP’s comment history is a disgrace.
Don’t feed the troll 🧌
Sounds like a good deal compared to the cost of living in California. But as a engineer, no paycheck will justify me considering a life where I live with so many Californians.
OP raises a good point. For 70 years the ruling party reigns and almost non-existent labor unions (they usually exist with few big companies) make the demands from people impossible to be heard, and also there are two types of workers that are regular and non-regular workers, the latter usually is usually with low income, no bonuses and no employment protections like the regular workers have, to keep labor cost low thus occurs no salary increase.
Over 40 percent of workforce in Japan is non-regular workers in Japan as of now.
replies are not based
Given I have the equivalent of a 2bd (2DK with more space than anything I ever had in NYC looool) for 1/4 of what I pay for a studio in the US, never mind food(!). And I had/have a good deal rent stabilized in NYC. Without that, it’d be more like 1/10-12(!). I turned down $150k (and have made $200k in the past) cause I was just so tired of the cost never mind the other negatives that living in the US entails (that I care about anyways).
Glad I quit driving in 2010 though. Anti car 13 years later.
Not sure why you are being downvoted when you are right. They are terrible and totally uncompetitive.
However given Japan has basically a “take as many as you need” supply of workers from south east Asia where people earn anything less… and Japanese just don’t seem to have an issue with wages because they are getting by… I don’t think anything will change.
Wages will continue trending down relative to cost of living until Japan caps out with foreigners or the people get sick of it.