---
title: What Three Languages Are Worth to an Employer in Japan
description: Employers in Japan rarely price a language. It works as a gate or as a condition of a seat. What a 1.4x English premium and a 21,500 yen allowance show.
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-10/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan-cover-en-2026-10.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

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Career

In this article

1. [Is there a salary premium for English in Japan?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s1)
2. [How employers actually pay for a language](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s2)
3. [Why doesn't good Japanese raise a foreigner's pay?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s3)
4. [The table that does price a language](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s4)
5. [What a third language is worth to the hiring side](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s5)

1. [Home](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)
2. [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)
3. [Career](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/career)

# What Three Languages Are Worth to an Employer in Japan

Employers pay for the seat

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)9 min read

Contents5

1. [Is there a salary premium for English in Japan?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s1)
2. [How employers actually pay for a language](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s2)
3. [Why doesn't good Japanese raise a foreigner's pay?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s3)
4. [The table that does price a language](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s4)
5. [What a third language is worth to the hiring side](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-languages-are-worth-in-japan#s5)

Employers in Japan almost never pay for a language. Most people assume the opposite: Japanese adds a slice to your salary, English adds another, and someone who works in three languages is the most expensive person in the room. Then you look for where that money sits. One public body in Japan has put an explicit number on Japanese ability. It is the immigration agency. On its points table for skilled-worker status, a JLPT N1 certificate earns 15 points, which by my arithmetic from the agency's own examples is what 3 million yen of extra annual salary earns. Immigration does not pay anyone's salary. The companies that do pay salaries have no such line.

## Is there a salary premium for English in Japan?

There is a number that looks like one, and it measures something else. In January 2025 the operator of a bilingual job site reported that its registrants in their fifties with business-level English earned 1.4 times the national average if they were men (2.61 million yen more) and 1.9 times if they were women (3.01 million yen more).

Look at who was counted. The sample was 19,291 Japanese nationals in their twenties to fifties who received a scout message from an employer on that site between October 2023 and September 2024. Business level meant a TOEIC Listening and Reading score of 735 or higher. More than 75% of the people scouted were at that level.

The comparison group was the National Tax Agency's average for 2023, which covers every salaried worker in the private sector, including people who are not regular employees. The release does not say which of the agency's averages it used. Working back from the multiples and the gaps (2.61 million divided by 0.4, 3.01 million divided by 0.9) gives a baseline of roughly 6.5 million and 3.3 million yen, which looks like the average for the same sex and age band. That is my back-calculation and the release does not state it.

So this compares people who get headhunted on a bilingual job site with salaried workers in general. Some of that 2.6 million yen is English. Some of it is the kind of company and job you already have to be in before an employer scouts you there. The data cannot separate the two.

Two details in the same release tell you more than the multiples do. The gap widens with age, and the publisher says it is especially large in the fifties. And for men in their thirties it reverses: those with conversational English or less had the higher average salary. The publisher's guess is that demand for this age group is strong whatever their language ability.

If English were paid as a skill, the bump would be about the same at 30 and at 50. It isn't. My reading is that the gap at 50 is the price of a seat. Management jobs at foreign firms and roles that face overseas can't be held without English, and the people who hold them are paid what the seat pays.

## How employers actually pay for a language

Mostly they don't pay for it separately. I sort what I see into a gate, a seat and a line item, and nearly all the money goes through the seat.

A language rarely has its own price. It decides which pool you enter and which seat you can hold

How employers pay for language ability. The grouping is the author's. Figures: DISCO (survey of December 2023), a bilingual job site's survey (released January 2025), MHLW General Survey on Working Conditions (2025)

1. 1GateBelow the bar you are out of the pool. Above it, nothing is added. 46.6% of companies named a shortage of candidates with the Japanese they need as a hiring problem.
2. 2SeatThe money follows the seat. Registrants in their fifties with business English earned 1.4 times (men) and 1.9 times (women) the national average. Men in their thirties showed no such gap.
3. 3Line itemThe case where the pay table has a row. Skill and qualification allowances average 21,500 yen a month for those who get one, across every kind of qualification.

Employers buy the seat that cannot run without the language. The language itself rarely carries a price tag.

Figure 1. Three ways employers in Japan pay for a language: as a gate with no premium (46.6% of companies cite too few foreign candidates with adequate Japanese), as a condition of a seat that pays what the seat pays (business-English registrants in their fifties earn 1.4 to 1.9 times the national average), and as an allowance averaging 21,500 yen a month across all qualifications.

Start with the line item, because it is the only one you can find in a pay table. In the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's 2025 General Survey on Working Conditions, which covers private companies with 30 or more regular employees, 53.0% of companies that pay allowances have one for skills and qualifications. Workers who received it got 21,500 yen a month on average in November 2024. A language certificate, where it earns anything, usually falls in this category along with every other certificate a company recognizes. Multiply by twelve and that is 258,000 yen a year. Set it beside 2.61 million and you can see the money is travelling by another route.

The seat is that route. In [my pay method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-pay-tracks?hsLang=en) I put "multilingual" in the same group of role allowances as overseas posting and on-call duty. I call the group conditions: the allowance is paid while the condition holds and stops when it ends. The employer's logic is plain. The money is attached to the role. Move to a team that serves only domestic customers and you keep the language, and may lose the pay.

## Why doesn't good Japanese raise a foreigner's pay?

Because for a foreigner working in Japan, Japanese is a gate. Clearing a gate earns nothing. Failing to clear it ends the conversation.

DISCO, a Japanese recruitment-information company that has since been renamed, surveyed companies in December 2023 on hiring international students and skilled foreign staff, and 478 replied. The republished release I read does not give the number answering each question. On problems in hiring foreign staff, 46.6% chose too few candidates with the Japanese communication ability they need. Asked why they hire international students from humanities programs, 64.0% said to secure excellent people. Only 30.6% said it was for work that needs language ability. And 82.0% said they would recruit international students in the same intake as Japanese students in fiscal 2024.

Read together, those say the company wants someone who can do the job, and Japanese is a precondition for that. People hired in the same intake generally start on the same pay table.

This also explains how employers use N1. The official description of the top level of the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test is the ability to understand Japanese used in a variety of circumstances, and the criteria it spells out are for reading and listening. So employers use N1 as a filter and judge speaking for themselves in the interview. As I wrote in [which requirement to relax first](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/which-requirement-to-relax-first?hsLang=en), the certificate can be downgraded to a nice-to-have, while the level of Japanese it takes to pin down requirements with a customer cannot. Employers treat the certificate and the ability as two different things.

## The table that does price a language

Japan does have a table that scores language ability. It belongs to the Immigration Services Agency.

Under the points system for highly skilled professionals, 70 points qualifies you for the Highly Skilled Professional status. The points calculation table gives 15 points for JLPT N1 and 10 for N2. Salary earns points too. In the examples the agency and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry give in their explanatory paper, an annual salary of 4 million yen is worth 10 points, 6 million is 20, 7 million is 25 and 9 million is 35.

The next step is my own arithmetic from those four examples, and the paper does not say it. Each extra million yen adds 5 points, so the 15 points for N1 weigh as much as 3 million yen of salary. The conversion holds only inside the range the examples cover, 4 million to 9 million yen, and a note on the table says the minimum salary that earns points differs by age band.

These are points toward a residence status, and they say nothing about what a company will pay. I bring them up because they show the employer's position from the other side. Somebody has priced the language. That somebody doesn't run a payroll.

## What a third language is worth to the hiring side

Usually it is listed as a plus, and a plus is worth zero in the offer. The reason is arithmetic. [Hiring requirements multiply](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-requirements-multiply?hsLang=en): job experience, industry, Japanese, English, and each one shrinks the pool. Add Chinese and there may be nobody left. So the person writing the job description demotes the second foreign language to "preferred" before anyone asks.

The exception is the seat that sits between headquarters and the local office. [Your bilingual staff are not translators](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/bilingual-staff-are-not-translators?hsLang=en) is about how to grade that seat: by the two ends it connects, whatever the test scores say. People who can work in three languages are expensive when they are expensive because such seats are few, and the people who can hold one are fewer.

Take one resume line: "native Chinese, JLPT N1, business English". At a company that sells only to Japanese customers, Japanese is the language that counts and the other two add nothing to the offer. At a company with headquarters in China, customers in Japan and investors who speak English, the same line can be worth a grade.

The resume did not change between those two companies. The job did. My guess is that a hiring manager reading that line asks two things. Which of these languages does this job stop working without? And how many other people on the market have that one?

The points system described here is summarized from public material of the Immigration Services Agency of Japan. It is not visa or legal advice. Point values and requirements are revised from time to time. For an actual application, check the agency's current publications or consult a licensed immigration specialist.

Sources (as of November 2026)

- [Human Global Talent, "How much does English ability change annual salary?" (released January 29, 2025, in Japanese)](https://www.daijob.com/uploads/pdfs/b266ab-944-e8872.pdf)
- [DISCO, Survey on Hiring International Students and Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals (fielded December 2023, released January 30, 2024, press release as republished, in Japanese)](https://jinjibu.jp/news/detl/23409/)
- [Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, General Survey on Working Conditions 2025, summary of results (published December 19, 2025, in Japanese)](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/itiran/roudou/jikan/syurou/25/dl/gaikyou.pdf)
- [Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, summary of linguistic competence required for each level](https://www.jlpt.jp/about/levelsummary.html)
- [Immigration Services Agency of Japan, points calculation table (in Japanese)](https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930001655.pdf)
- [Immigration Services Agency and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, residence status for foreign IT professionals and the points system (revised January 2020, in Japanese)](https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930003139.pdf)

---

Author

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

Launching in Japan, starting with people and systems. I write about building organizations, sales teams and technology organizations in Japan, in English, Japanese and Chinese.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)[Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

## More in this column

1. 01[How Far Can Foreigners Rise in Japanese Companies?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/how-far-foreigners-rise-in-japanese-firms?hsLang=en)7 min
   
   Of 130 foreign directors at Nikkei 225 firms, 95 are outside directors. No one counts foreign managers, and only 10% of ...
2. 02[Same Title, Two Levels Apart: Foreign vs Japanese Firms](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/same-title-two-grades-apart?hsLang=en)7 min
   
   Japan officially defines a bucho as heading 20+ people and a kacho 10+. A Director with three reports meets neither. ...
3. 03[After a Counteroffer: How Both Employers See You](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/after-accepting-a-counteroffer?hsLang=en)7 min
   
   Recruiters in Japan say counteroffers come most often when no successor exists (65%). How the old employer and the ...

[Column guide: Career](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/guide-career?hsLang=en) · [Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en) · [The method behind the articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en)

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