Govt mulls recalculating wage figures: Abe

February 1, 2019

Tokyo--The Japanese government is looking at whether it is possible to recalculate wage figures for the first 11 months of last year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday, in connection with recent revelations of irregularities in a key labor survey.

Abe made the comments at a plenary meeting of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of parliament, in response to allegations that price-adjusted real-term wages may have fallen year on year in most months of 2018.

The allegations came after opposition parties estimated real wage figures themselves. "The possibility has emerged that real wages actually fell in 2018," said Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

Fukuyama argued that the government-claimed positive effects of Abenomics, the prime minister's reflationary policy mix, may prove to have been faked.

Abe said even recent data revisions suggest that wages remain on an upward trend. In the revisions, the growth of nominal wages last June was altered from the initial reading of 3.3 pct to 2.8 pct.

"Our view that the employment and income situations are steadily improving has not changed," Abe stressed.

He said the government is working to announce promptly a specific schedule for its response to shortfalls in past unemployment and other benefits caused by the survey irregularities. Jiji Press