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2026-09-10

The wage floor and the residency bar moved in opposite directions

賃金の下限と永住の基準が、同じ月に反対方向へ動いた

Japan’s minimum wage rises to an average of 1,177 yen an hour from October. Up 56 yen, the second largest jump on record.

The same month, Japan raises the bar for permanent residency to an income above the average Japanese household. That is 5.8 million yen a year.

Put those two numbers in the same room.

Full time on the new minimum wage, eight hours a day, works out to roughly 2.4 million yen a year. To clear the permanent residency bar you would need to earn about two and a half times that.

So the wage floor went up, and staying permanently moved further out of reach, at the same time. For anyone on or near minimum wage, those two changes were not designed to meet.

Permanent residency was never meant to be automatic, and a country is allowed to ask that people can support themselves.

The problem is which industries this lands on.

Look at which sectors raised their hands for foreign workers: care, food service, agriculture, construction, hospitality. Those are precisely the sectors that sit closest to the minimum wage. Japan asked these industries to recruit abroad, and is now telling most of those recruits that permanent residency is out of reach at the wage the job pays.

You cannot invite people into an industry and then use that industry’s wage as the reason they can’t stay.

If you employ people in those sectors, they already know these numbers. The question is whether you do.

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