By Makiko Yamazaki
TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese companies have agreed to raise pay by 5.4% this year, the second tally of annual labour talk results from the country’s largest union umbrella group Rengo showed on Friday.
The number is slightly lower than the preliminary reading of 5.46% announced last week, but on course to be the biggest pay hike in 34 years.
Rengo, a 7 million member-strong group, releases the results of the closely-watched wage negotiations in several stages.
Blue-chip firms are first to wrap up their talks in mid-March. Final tallies are usually lower than preliminary figures as most agreements between smaller companies and their unions are factored in from April through June.
“The levels of agreed pay hikes have been high,” Tomoko Yoshino, Rengo’s president told a press conference. “We aim to spread this momentum to smaller firms,” she added.
The reading compares with last year’s 5.25% average pay hike in the second tally, which was then revised down over several stages to the final 5.1% average announced in July.
The Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady on Wednesday and warned of heightening global economic uncertainty from trade tensions, but strong wage growth and the inflation picture suggest that conditions for further rate hikes are falling into place.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Kentaro Sugiyama; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Kim Coghill)
