Re wages questions from this Reuters survey of Japanese business.
- Ahead of spring "shunto" labour negotiations, managers at 24% of the companies polled said they planned on across-the-board bumps in base salary along with regularly scheduled wage increases.
- Another 29% said they would carry out regular pay increases only
- 38% were undecided
"Prime Minister Kishida has been saying raise wages, raise wages, but the decision to hike pay isn't done on the words of a prime minister or president," said Masayuki Kubota, chief strategist at Rakuten Securities. "Rather it's because a company needs better human resources to achieve its growth potential." "If the company isn't competitive, raising wages translates just to higher costs that will only worsen its situation,"
As well as Kishida the BOJ is also hoping to see wage increases to solidify higher inflation.
Yesterday, meanwhile, the BOJ took the opportunity to hold off an further reduction of its very easy monetary policy:
