Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2015 July 15 - 21 [LABOR]

Compensation increase for top 500 corporate execs is 23.7 times more than wage increases for regular employees

The amount of compensation paid to executives in the top 500 companies increased by 21.3% in the past two years while regular employees’ wages rose by only 4.6%. The income inequality between the two has become greater than ever.

Akahata, based on each company’s securities report, checked the top 500 corporations among companies which achieved an increase in their current profits between fiscal 2012 and 2014.

According to the Akahata calculation, the amount of annual remuneration among the leading 500 companies was an average of 35.57 million yen per director in 2014, up 7.56 million yen from two years ago. Wages paid per employee, on an yearly average, amounted to 7.2 million yen, up 319,000 yen.

Since the figure is regarding only regular employees of large corporations, their annual average income is relatively high compared to workers overall. Yet, the difference in the amount of increase per person between executives and regular workers in large corporations was 23.7 times.

Given that the consumption tax rate went up from 5% to 8% last year, even those who work for large corporations on an open-ended contract could not enjoy as much wage increase as 4.6%, in effect.

The amount of dividends among the top 500 businesses increased by 2.2 trillion yen or by 48%.