Japan Job Ad Pay Averages ¥5.13M. Experience Adds ¥1.15M

Japan's record 5.13 million yen average for mid-career job ads is a fine number to show headquarters and a poor number to make an offer with. Mynavi, one of Japan's large job boards, reported on 15 October 2026 that full-time job ads on its site offered an average first-year salary of 5.132 million yen in the first half of fiscal 2026, the highest on record. The more useful number sits underneath it: ads that require experience pay about 1.15 million yen more than ads that don't.

What does the 5.13 million yen average measure?

It measures what employers write in job ads, not what anyone gets paid. The source is Mynavi Career Research Lab, the research arm of Mynavi Corporation, and the data is every full-time (seishain) job ad newly posted on its job board, Mynavi Tenshoku, in a given month.

Each ad lists a salary range. Mynavi takes the midpoint of the lower and upper bound, so an ad for 4 to 5.5 million yen counts as 4.75 million. It drops non-full-time ads and treats the top 1% of incomes, as defined by the labor ministry's National Survey of Living Conditions, as outliers. The first half of the fiscal year means April to September 2026.

The denominator is ads. An ad that hires ten people and an ad that hires nobody count the same. So the figure tells you how employers price jobs in public. It doesn't tell you what candidates negotiated, what companies paid, or whether people who changed jobs earned more. For that last question, the labor ministry asks job changers directly, and the answer is less cheerful. I went through it in Changing Jobs in Japan: 40% Got a Raise, 31% Took a Cut.

Still, the asking price is rising. The half-year average is 600,000 yen above the same period five years earlier. September 2026 alone came in at 5.125 million yen, up 151,000 yen from September 2025.

The gap is the experience premium

A Japanese headline on this data mentioned a "1.14 million yen gap." I couldn't get the article behind that headline, and Mynavi's own release doesn't use the figure. The only published pair that matches is September 2026: ads requiring experience averaged 5.722 million yen, ads open to people without experience averaged 4.574 million. That is a difference of 1.148 million yen. In July the gap was wider, 1.288 million.

Read it as the market price of having done the job before. Two ads for what looks like the same full-time role can be a million yen apart before anyone has interviewed.

Industry gaps are just as large. In the first half, finance and insurance ads averaged 6.252 million yen, IT, telecom and internet 5.929 million, consulting 5.7 million. Finance is up 1.457 million over five years and IT up 912,000, both well ahead of the overall 600,000. The two gaps also stack. Among September ads that don't require experience, IT paid the most at 5.241 million, above the average for all ads.

The average sits in the middle; ads that require experience pay 1.148 million yen more than ads that don't

First-year salary in full-time job ads on Mynavi Tenshoku, 10,000 yen units (man-en). Midpoint of each ad's salary range, averaged. Top: September 2026. Bottom: first half of FY2026 (April to September), top three industries and all industries. Mynavi Career Research Lab, 15 October 2026. Bars scaled to 625.2

AverageSegment

By experience required　September 2026

• Experience required48.0% of ads
  572.2
• All ads
  512.5
• No experience needed52.0% of ads
  457.4

By industry　first half of FY2026

• Finance, insurance+145.7 in 5 years
  625.2
• IT, telecom, internet+91.2 in 5 years
  592.9
• Consulting+54.9 in 5 years
  570.0
• All industries+60.0 in 5 years
  513.2

The average says the market is rising. Your offer depends on which segment you are hiring from.

Part of the rise is a change in mix

In September, 48.0% of ads required experience, up 5.2 points from a year earlier. When the expensive segment grows, the average rises even if neither segment's price moves. Mynavi itself suggests the growing share of experienced-hire ads may be pushing the average up.

How much of the rise does that explain? A rough calculation: a 5.2-point shift times this September's 1.148 million yen gap is about 60,000 yen. That is around 40% of the 151,000 yen year-on-year rise. This is my estimate, and it assumes the gap was similar a year ago. Mynavi didn't publish this breakdown.

One more pair of numbers. September ads were 140.8% of the year before. Applications were 98.8%. Employers posted four in ten more jobs, and roughly the same number of people applied. Companies are bidding for the same experienced people, and the bidding shows up in the ads.

What this means for your Japan offer

A common habit at foreign companies in Japan is to anchor every offer on one market average, say "around 5 million yen," because that is the number headquarters accepts. The trouble is that the person you want rarely sits at the average.

If you need a salesperson who already knows Japanese customers, or an engineer who can ship in week one, your comparison is the 5.7 million yen experienced segment. If that candidate works in finance or IT today, their sense of market rate is closer to 6 million. Open at 5.1 million and you will get polite declines before the first interview, and conclude that Japanese talent is hard to hire. It isn't, at the right price.

If you are willing to hire without experience and train, about 4.6 million yen is a defensible start. Then budget the six months before that person is productive as part of the cost.

Location matters too. Mynavi groups ads by head office region. In September, ads from companies based in the Kanto region averaged 5.364 million yen and those in the Tokai region 4.962 million. Most foreign entities sit in Tokyo, so a budget built on a national figure starts short.

This is why I think pay in a talent map should be written as ranges, one per ring. What do people in the same role and industry earn, what do people in the adjacent industry earn, and where are the floors and ceilings. A talent map answers where the people are and what they cost. The two maps page explains how the rings are drawn.

One caveat on the data itself. The wider an ad's range, the less the midpoint means. An ad for 4 to 8 million yen goes into the average as 6 million, and the data says nothing about where in that range the actual offer lands. The 5.13 million yen figure is an asking price on paper. Whether people end up paid more or less than that is a question for other data.

Use the record average to explain to headquarters why Japan hiring costs more each year. Then put it away and price the specific person.

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