Average salary in Japan 2026: JPY 340,600 a month

What the JPY 340,600 figure measures

The number is a mean of gross June pay for general (full-time) workers at private establishments with 10 or more regular employees. Three things follow from that. It leaves out the smallest employers. It leaves out overtime and bonuses, which in Japan are a large share of annual pay. And as a mean, it is pulled up by high earners; this MHLW release does not publish a median.

Pay rose 3.1% on the year. Men averaged JPY 373,400 and women JPY 285,900, a gap index of 76.6, the narrowest since 1976. Short-time (part-time) workers averaged JPY 1,518 an hour.

Multiplying by 12 gives JPY 4,087,200. Treat that as a floor for annual pay, not an estimate of it, because bonuses and overtime sit on top. We have not used a figure for those because this release does not give one alongside the monthly mean.

Average salary in Japan by region

Average salary in Japan by industry

Tokyo, other prefectures and industries

Tokyo is the highest-paying prefecture at JPY 418,300 a month, 22.8% above the national mean. Kanagawa, Aichi and Osaka also sit above the national figure, but we did not read their exact values from the MHLW prefecture table, so we leave them out rather than guess. By industry, electricity, gas, heat supply and water pays the most at JPY 444,000.

We do not publish salaries by job title. Treat the averages here as context and price a specific role from local offers or your provider's benchmark.

What an average salary costs you as an employer

Employer social insurance in Tokyo is 15.70% of pay: employees' pension 9.15%, health insurance 4.925%, the child-rearing support levy and contribution 0.475% together (assuming the levy is split equally, the usual practice), employment insurance 0.85% and workers' compensation 0.3% for office work. Employees aged 40 to 64 add 0.81% long-term care, for 16.51%.

If you pay bonuses, they attract social insurance too, so a JPY 1,000,000 annual bonus adds about JPY 157,000 more (we did not check the bonus caps). Health insurance rates differ by prefecture, so a non-Tokyo hire costs slightly more or less. The Japan employer of record guide walks through a JPY 6,000,000 example line by line.

Average pay against the minimum wage

Japan's minimum wage is set per prefecture and per hour. Tokyo's JPY 1,280 from October 1, 2026 comes to about JPY 221,867 a month at 40 hours a week, so the Tokyo average salary is 1.89 times the Tokyo minimum. Nationally, the weighted average minimum of JPY 1,177 works out to about JPY 204,013 a month, and the JPY 340,600 mean is 1.67 times that.

Part-time pay is closer to the floor: the JPY 1,518 short-time hourly average is JPY 238 above Tokyo's minimum. For every prefecture's rate and its start date, see the Japan minimum wage table.

Hiring in Japan at these salaries

Without a Japanese entity, an employer of record can hire on your behalf, enroll the employee in shakai hoken and handle income and resident tax withholding. Published fees run from $99 a month (Native Teams, whose help center says EUR 99) to $699 (Oyster), and Remote lists from $599, all checked October 16 and 18, 2026. Compare them on our EOR pricing page.

Run your own numbers with the employee cost calculator, and see how Japan's employer burden compares with other markets in the cost index by country. Leave rules, which affect cover planning, are on the Japan maternity leave page.