Japan's real wages rose for the first time in five months in January, the government said Tuesday, largely benefiting from a change in the way inflation was calculated in the survey compared to the previous month.
The wage report offers some relief for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government after a sharp rise in global energy costs and a recent surge in coronavirus infections posed headwinds to corporate and consumer activity in the country.
"I don't think that we can say wages have returned to pre-coronavirus levels," a labor ministry official said, adding that overtime pay would take longer to recover from declines seen since the onset of the pandemic, two years ago.