Nearly 10% of firms in Japan said they will hire more regular workers, over three times as many as those that will slash them, to cope with upcoming sharp hikes across the country in the minimum wage, reports Japan Today, citing a recent survey by credit research company Tokyo Shoko Research. The survey reflected that more employers are judging it better to shift their labour force to non-fixed-term regular workers, given that it would be more costly for them to employ fixed-term, hourly-paid non-regular staff. The online survey found that 914, or 9.8%, of 9,278 firms responding said they will hire more regular staff, while 287, or 3.0%, will reduce such workers, when asked about the impact of the wage floor rise scheduled for October. Meanwhile 83.4% said the minimum pay increase will not affect their employment strategy. The trend was more notable among big companies, as the percentage in large-firms was 89.7%, compared to 82.3% in small and medium-sized businesses.

The results came after a Japanese government panel proposed in July raising the average hourly minimum wage in fiscal 2021 by JPY 28 (USD 0.25) to JPY 930 (USD 8.45), the highest since fiscal 2002, when it began using an hourly wage to propose a rough target for hikes. Tokyo Shoko Research said companies with strong business performances may "shift to hiring more regular employees" instead of per-hour-based workers such as temps and part-timers, citing Japan's long-time labor shortage accompanied with its rapidly ‘greying’ population.