AlwaysAisle

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has published salary of working people for year 2016. This is data based on people working full time. Part time, temp, etc. were excluded from this survey.

Average monthly salary for 2016 was 304,000 yen (US$ 2,709 or € 2 563). Average monthly salary for male was 335,200 yen (US$ 2,989 or € 2 826), and average monthly salary for female was 244,600 yen (US$ 2,181 or € 2 063).

Average monthly salaries based on occupations were:

1. Airline pilot: 1,493,300 yen (US$ 13,314 or € 12 592)
2. Medical doctor: 858,900 yen (US$ 7,657 or € 7 242)
3. Dentist: 676,400 yen (US$ 6,030 or € 5 702)
4. University professor: 676,400 yen (US$ 6,030 or € 5 702)
5. University associate professor: 528,600 yen (US$ 4,713 or € 4 457)
6. Lawyer: 489,100 yen (US$ 4,360 or € 4 124)
7. Drilling and explosive specialist: 472,400 yen (US$ 4,211 or € 3 983)
8. Accountant: 465,700 yen (US$ 4,152 or € 3 927)
9. University lecturer: 448,000 yen (US$ 3,995 or € 3 778)
10. Flight attendant: 434,500 yen (US$ 3,875 or € 3 664)

After my graduate school I entertained about academic career. In the U.S. chemist in industry get paid far more than chemist in academia. Looks like it pays to be a professor in Japan.

Also, #10 is flight attendant, really?! Those ladies on ANA and JAL flights are getting paid that much…

Also, pilots earning more than doctors were interesting. However, I heard senior airline pilots in the U.S. for legacy carriers under old pay scale (not today's pay scale) can easily earn US$ 120,000 - 150,000/year.

In Japan it is common to talk salary based on monthly pay, not annual pay.

TravisMT81

Wow surprised about the Pilot/Doctor difference!

RichardInSF

My company's Japanese subsidiary paid a mid-range software support engineer about Y500,000 a month, plus benefits (commutation allowance, vacation time, etc).

evergrn

This is why it's so hard to justify moving back to Jpn, as much as I want to live there. Pay's so low compared to the US (and probably longer hours there).

nishimark

I've lived in Japan for more than 25 years. Pay remains as it was then. Kind of amazing.

mjm

I have lived here 26 years and those numbers are way off what you make in a reasonable firm in the big cities. Way way off. Averages are fairly useless for judging achievable salaries.

Add in job stability, healthcare, general conditions associated with life and Japan, or at least Tokyo stands head and shoulders above most US options these days. I go home at 6pm every day too.

Now if we could just get rid of the earthquakes, but that is our Trump to bear

evergrn

That's good to hear. I want to hear more positive comments like yours about Jpn's work life and future, because all I ever hear are dismissive comments when I talk to people about moving to Jpn. With regards to salary, though, my understanding is that the pay for my field in Jpn is generally less than half of what it is in US. Trying to convince myself money isn't everything. One of these days, I might start a thread for further discussion on this and maybe pick you guys' brains.

mjm

Happy to opine and provide numbers for you as and when you may want it.

One thing I will say though is that the US being a very individually organized society makes it hard for those that prefer that to the more group oriented society here. The farm ethic prevails here without any trace of a meritocracy. That appeals to some and not so much to others. Beyond that,
the money, work hours and so forth are controllable for the most part.

The health thing s big too. I look at my folks paying a fairly large chunk of change to have health care. At 78 that is insanity. Here it is not free but nowhere near the piece of disposable income it is in the US.

As for Soc. Sec. the monthly payments they get are nearly identical to what Japan offers a worker who paid into the system for 25 years+.

nishimark

Those wage numbers seem pretty much in line to me. I agree that quality of life here is better than what I've seen in the US. Safe for my family, availability of quality fresh food, and lack of political upheaval in daily conversations, for example.

mjm

Any decent Kacho class or Bucho class employee at a large company will be making what they state for positions 2,3, or 4. Even government teachers (i.e. paid by the prefecture) make about what they state for positions 5,6, or 7.

Lawyers worth their salt make far more than the No. 1 stated salary. Far more.

Traders and other financial sorts make salaries commensurate with New York or Hong Kong or they would not be here. That number is astronomical compared to what is stated here.

railroadtycoon

More doctors around but less pilots, pilot shortage in many countries.

evergrn

Thanks. I will probably take you up on it sometime down the road and solicit advices from you, nishimark and other expats via a new thread, after I've had time to think and research some more so that I can come up with meaningful questions and rebuttals on the topic of working and resettling in Jpn.

I completely understand what you're saying above in theory. It's just hard to know where I stand on that personally. I'm pretty Americanized, but there's also a Japnaese in me that makes it hard to fit in US even after all these years. I love the salary, privacy, work-life balance, educational setup and lack of 上下関係 in the US. But I can't stand the self-entitlement, victim mentality and lack of courtesy that are so prevalent in US (don't mean to paint with broad brush... of course there're many good people here). Anyways we can carry on this discussion another time.

mkjr

I got to say that I am surprised by how low some of the salaries are.

what do the people do that appear to be spending so much? Perhaps you only see a special night out as a tourist.

AlwaysAisle

I think that is it. Having a meal at Michelin starred restaurant in Tokyo and assuming average Japanese live like that… Same thing as foreign tourists visiting New York City and having a meal at a nice restaurant and assuming that is a lifestyle of average Americans.

People working at Roppongi Hills likely do not represent average Japanese. There are so many people working at Chu-sho kigyou (中小企業) and when it comes to number of people, likely that far larger number of people in Japan work for 中小企業 than 大企業.

mjm

I disagree. Average? What is average? Is the implication that poor equals average? That is simply not the case. Big city salaries are more than country village salaries sure, but living and working in Tokyo the salaries are very good. Significantly higher than shown in the first post. Roppongi Hills, Marunouchi (the financial CBD), Toranomon (a bridge area growing hugely in stature), Shibuya, Shinjuku, etc. ad infinitum are the base for milions of workers and they create a spectrum of less well off to better off. It is the same anywhere. I suspect that what is actually the case is somebody compiling these statistics did not compare like with like and averaged salaries from several hundred km outside of Tokyo with those in Tokyo.

Interesting to note is that Japanese firms are growing, hiring more people and demanding larger and larger floorplates. There are a number of surveys done each year of the top several thousand companies and the results are very consistent in this regard.

As fort Michelin restaurant dining, given the sheer number of such places it is actually quite common here for colleagues to dine at those places. I do too sometimes but given the even greater number of amazing eateries which no interest in ratings we eat pretty well here.

It is eminently clear that there are gross misconceptions about lifestyle and incomes in Japan.