With Japanese workers seeing the biggest pay increase in 30 years in spring wage negotiations, the country — which has been long haunted by tepid wage growth — will further reform the labor market and bolster investment in human resources to keep the momentum going, according to a draft of the government's annual economic and fiscal policy guidelines.
The guidelines, unveiled Wednesday, also say that the government, which has spent tens of trillions of yen to cope with the pandemic and inflated its already ballooning public debts, will end its crisis-mode spending.
"Given that positive movements, such as high levels of wage hike and companies' appetite for investments, are surely emerging now, we need to expand them by setting these guidelines to achieve the virtuous cycle of growth and redistribution," said economic revitalization minister Shigeyuki Goto during a news conference on Wednesday.