Masami Fujino got his first raise in 20 years recently, but it’s still not enough to let the Tokyo day laborer treat himself to plain McDonald’s hamburgers as much as he used to. | Reuters
But many of the small and midsize firms that employ the vast majority of Japanese workers cannot keep up.
Their numbers have risen since then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched policies a decade ago that boosted stocks and corporate profits but did not boost wages much. Irregular workers were 36.7 percent of the workforce last year, up from 31.5 percent in 2019, government data shows. “I’m really jealous of places like Uniqlo with their raises – and I wonder if we’ll ever see the same,” he said.
A university dropout, Fujino worked part-time jobs during Japan’s late 1980s economic boom years, then became a bartender before shifting to manual labor 20 years ago. Sometimes he works nights, sometimes it’s the day shift.Single, Fujino cooks most of his own food – rice, dried seaweed, a fried egg, rice balls, maybe with pickled plums. Occasionally he eats at inexpensive diners or goes out for drinks.
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