Japan firms set to offer strong wage hikes for third straight year
Japan’s largest companies are expected to offer substantial wage hikes for a third consecutive year, helping workers cope with inflation and retain staff amid labour shortages, per Reuters.
Last year’s shunto or "spring labor offensive" wage talks resulted in a 5.1% average pay hike, the highest in 33 years, following 3.58% in 2023. This year’s increases are expected to be similar.
Labor union group Rengo, Japan’s largest labor union umbrella group with 7 million members, is pushing for a 6.09% wage increase, surpassing last year’s 5.85%, a level not seen in 32 years. Some firms, like Denso, have already agreed to record hikes.
Investors will keep an eye on small and midsized businesses, which employ 70% of Japan’s workforce, to see if they can match large firms’ wage increases.
Market reaction
At the press time, the USD/JPY pair is up 0.17% on the day to trade at 148.02.
Japanese Yen FAQs
The Japanese Yen (JPY) is one of the world’s most traded currencies. Its value is broadly determined by the performance of the Japanese economy, but more specifically by the Bank of Japan’s policy, the differential between Japanese and US bond yields, or risk sentiment among traders, among other factors.
One of the Bank of Japan’s mandates is currency control, so its moves are key for the Yen. The BoJ has directly intervened in currency markets sometimes, generally to lower the value of the Yen, although it refrains from doing it often due to political concerns of its main trading partners. The BoJ ultra-loose monetary policy between 2013 and 2024 caused the Yen to depreciate against its main currency peers due to an increasing policy divergence between the Bank of Japan and other main central banks. More recently, the gradually unwinding of this ultra-loose policy has given some support to the Yen.
Over the last decade, the BoJ’s stance of sticking to ultra-loose monetary policy has led to a widening policy divergence with other central banks, particularly with the US Federal Reserve. This supported a widening of the differential between the 10-year US and Japanese bonds, which favored the US Dollar against the Japanese Yen. The BoJ decision in 2024 to gradually abandon the ultra-loose policy, coupled with interest-rate cuts in other major central banks, is narrowing this differential.
The Japanese Yen is often seen as a safe-haven investment. This means that in times of market stress, investors are more likely to put their money in the Japanese currency due to its supposed reliability and stability. Turbulent times are likely to strengthen the Yen’s value against other currencies seen as more risky to invest in.
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