Japan Overtime Pay y/y

Overtime Pay y/y reflects a change in extra pays for overtime hours to Japanese employees in the current month compared to the same month a year ago.

The normal duration of a working week in Japan is 40 hours. If an employee works over 40 hours week, the company shall pay overtime to the employee (unless he or she works in a management position). If the company employees works overtime on a regular basis, the company should prepare a separate agreement and provide it to the Labor Standards Inspection Office. The overtime pays in Japan are fixed in accordance with the labor law and depend on the time worked.

However, overtime pay is often not paid fairly in Japan, but many Japanese still do not strike or change jobs, since it is believed among the Japanese society that frequent job change may negatively affect further employment.

In Japan, despite the economic upturn, wages of workers, including overtime pays have been sluggish. Japan used to be called an all-middle-class society, and many people had similar incomes, but the gap has been widening since 2000s. Therefore, the distribution of wage income is a graph with two mountains.

Generally, the growth of wages and overtime pays reflects the economy expansion. However, since these data do not change much in Japan, the impact of the Overtime Pay indicator on national currency quotes is rather small.