Japanese employees will earn a little more yen this year. Their unions obtained a 3.8% increase in income, a record for 30 years.
Wages have been increasing very little each year in Japan for more than two decades, organizations have long preferred to emphasize job security rather than high wage demands, especially since consumer prices were almost stagnant in the archipelago.
Inflation woke up
But inflation has also woken up in Japan since last year, notably under the effect of soaring energy prices, and reached 4.2% excluding fresh products in January, the highest level since 1981. .
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government was also urging businesses to grant wage hikes to minimize the impact of inflation on purchasing power, as Japanese consumers are further hurt by the fall in the yen since the last year.
The big question now is whether the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for 70% of the assets, will follow the movement, knowing that they are generally less able than the large groups to pass on the increase in their costs on their selling prices.
This result for the next fiscal year 2023/24 (starting April 1) is significantly above economists’ expectations and could potentially encourage the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to normalize its monetary policy, currently still ultra-accommodative.
An expected increase in family allowances and amounts of parental leave
In addition, Fumio Kishida promised on Friday an increase in family allowances and the amounts of parental leave, stressing that there was only one ” last chance in an attempt to halt the drastic decline of the Japanese population.
Nearly 30% of Japan’s 125 million inhabitants are aged 65 and over, a world record after Monaco. And the number of births in the country fell in 2022 below the 800,000 mark, a new low since these statistics began in 1899 and almost half as many as 40 years ago, according to government figures published at the end of FEBRUARY.
« In six or seven years, this will be the last chance to reverse the declining birth rate “, warned the Prime Minister on Friday during a press conference on the new measures of the government on this front. ” I want to create a society where young people can marry as they wish, and where anyone who wants to can have children and raise them without stress. “, he added.
The Japanese government also hopes to raise the rate of taking paternity leave to 50% in 2025/26, and to 80% by 2030, against only 14% in 2021. To do this, it intends to offer compensation to companies to encourage the use of this leave, and to increase the amounts of parental leave if both parents use it.
However, he did not quantify the cost of all these measures and did not say how the State intended to finance them. However, Japan has already greatly increased its huge public debt in recent years through successive plans to support the economy and is already planning to increase its military spending considerably by 2027. The government should detail its anti-natality plan in June.
In Greece, the minimum wage will be increased by 9.4%
The minimum wage in Greece will be increased by 9.4% to 780 euros gross. This is the third minimum wage increase carried out by the right-wing government in power since July 2019.
In Greece, wages remain particularly low mainly due to their reduction during the financial crisis of the last decade (2009-2018) and the strict austerity measures then imposed by the country’s creditors (EU and IMF). Lowered by 22% during the crisis, the minimum wage had been increased by 11% for the first time by the previous government of Alexis Tsipras.
After exceeding the 10% mark between April and September 2022, consumer prices have fallen in recent months. In February inflation rose to 6.1% over one year.
(With AFP)