Many major Japanese firms were reluctant to offer base pay hikes during annual wage talks held Wednesday, with Toyota Motor Corp. forgoing its uniform monthly pay-scale increase for the first time since 2013 as coronavirus jitters pervade.
The decisions over wages could further hurt household spending and the nation's economy, which is already on the edge of a recession after it shrank in the October-December quarter after private consumption was dented by a consumption tax hike on Oct. 1.
Toyota, a benchmark in wage talks, offered a raise of an average ¥8,600 a month per employee but did not include base pay hikes in the figure for the first time in seven years.