Part-Time in Japan: the ¥1.06M Wall Is Gone. What It Changes for Your Pay, Pension and Dependant Status

Since 1 October 2026, earning over ¥88,000 a month no longer decides whether a part-timer joins health insurance and pension: only your hours do. What changed, what didn't (the ¥1.3M line is alive), and the real maths of 19 vs 20 hours.

For years, part-timers in Japan did the same strange December dance: check the pay slips, count the yen, and cancel a few shifts so the year stayed under "¥1.06 million". Cross that line at a big company and health insurance and pension premiums started coming out of your pay.

On 1 October 2026, that line officially stopped existing. Here's what changed, what didn't (spoiler: the ¥1.3 million line is still very much alive), and what it really does to your pay slip.

What actually changed on 1 October 2026

Under the 2025 pension reform law (令和7年年金制度改正法), the Japan Pension Service confirmed that the wage requirement for short-time workers to join employee health insurance (健康保険, kenko hoken) and employee pension (厚生年金, kosei nenkin) was abolished on 1 October 2026. That requirement was a scheduled monthly wage of ¥88,000 or more, which is where the famous "about ¥1.06 million a year" came from.

What's left to decide whether a part-timer gets enrolled:

20 hours or more a week of scheduled work (所定労働時間)
an employer with 51 or more employees (a 特定適用事業所)
not a student
employment expected to last more than 2 months

The labour ministry's own Q&A puts it bluntly: you no longer need to worry about the ¥1.06 million line. And here's the funny part: the ministry had said it would scrap the rule once minimum wages everywhere reached ¥1,016 an hour, because 20 hours a week at ¥1,016 already comes to about ¥88,000 a month. Every prefecture is above that now (see our 2026 minimum wage table). So for most people, the yen line and the hours line had quietly become the same line. Now it's official: the number to watch is your hours, not your yen.

Does it apply to you?

Three questions decide it: your contract hours, your employer's size, and whether you're a student.

Hours

It's the hours written in your contract or the work rules, not overtime. But if you actually work 20 hours or more for two months in a row and it looks set to continue, you're enrolled from the third month. A contract of 2 months or less still counts if renewal is expected. Full-timers, and part-timers working at least three-quarters of full-time hours and days, were already covered.

Employer size

"Employees" here means people enrolled in the employee pension (full-timers and anyone on three-quarters or more), counted across the whole company. The size rule shrinks step by step:

Company size	Part-timers covered from
51 or more	Already covered
36 to 50	October 2027
21 to 35	October 2029
11 to 20	October 2032
10 or fewer	October 2035

A smaller company can also opt in early (任意特定適用事業所) if its staff agree: a union representing a majority, a majority representative, or at least half of the employees concerned.

Students

Students are still excluded: university and graduate school, junior college, vocational school (専修学校), high school and similar, plus courses of a year or more at a 各種学校 (kakushu gakko). Night school, distance learning and students on leave are covered like anyone else. At a Japanese-language school, it depends on the school's legal status, so ask the school. And as an international student, your visa caps you at 28 hours a week anyway (student visa guide). Dependants on a 家族滞在 (kazoku taizai) visa have the same 28-hour cap, but they're not students, so the 20-hour rule applies to them in full (dependent visa guide).

What did NOT change: the ¥1.3 million line and the tax lines

If you work under 20 hours, or for a smaller company, you're not enrolled at work, and the old rule for being a dependant on your spouse's or parent's insurance still applies: your yearly income must stay under ¥1.3 million (¥1.5 million if you're 19 to 22 and not the spouse, ¥1.8 million from age 60). If you live together, it must also be under half of their income. Cross it and you leave their insurance, and you pay National Health Insurance and National Pension yourself.

Two softer edges since 2026:

From 1 April 2026, if a salary is your only income, the check can use the pay written in your contract (労働条件通知書, rodo joken tsuchisho) instead of what you actually earned, so unplanned overtime doesn't push you out. The contract must add up to under ¥1.3 million and spell out your hours (a vague "shift-based" doesn't work).
A temporary jump caused by extra hours during a staff shortage can be covered by a certificate from your employer, but not more than twice in a row.

And the tax lines are a different system again. For 2026, your spouse keeps the full spouse deduction (配偶者控除, haigusha kojo) if your salary is ¥1.36 million or less, the same limit as the dependant deduction for other family members, and a shrinking spouse special deduction up to about ¥2.07 million. You pay no income tax yourself on a 2026 salary up to ¥1.78 million (the ¥740,000 employment deduction plus the ¥1.04 million basic deduction). Your employer applies all this at the December 2026 year-end adjustment, and the full list is in our tax return guide. Resident tax has its own, lower lines.

The honest maths: 19 hours vs 20 hours

A real example with official 2026 rates: a part-timer under 40 in Saitama, ¥1,200 an hour, at a company with 51+ employees. We used the Japan Health Insurance Association's Saitama table (health 9.67%, split in half, plus half of the 0.23% child support levy), the employee pension at 9.15% and employment insurance at 0.5%.

Per month	19 h/week	20 h/week
Gross pay	¥98,800	¥104,000
Health insurance (grade ¥104,000)	¥0	¥5,028
Child support levy	¥0	¥120
Employee pension	¥0	¥9,516
Employment insurance	¥0	¥520
Left before tax	¥98,800	¥88,816

Yes: one extra hour a week, about ¥10,000 less in your pocket every month. At this wage you'd need about 23 hours a week to take home what you had at 19. Both columns stay under ¥1.3 million a year (¥1,185,600 and ¥1,248,000), so a family member keeps their tax deduction either way, and at 19 hours you stay on their health insurance.

Now flip it. Not anyone's dependant? Then you pay National Pension yourself: ¥17,920 a month for fiscal 2026. Your whole share of health insurance plus pension at 20 hours (¥14,664) is less than the National Pension alone, before your National Health Insurance bill even arrives. For many single part-timers, getting enrolled is a pay rise. (From age 40, add the long-term care premium.)

What you get for that money

The ¥10,000 doesn't vanish. It buys:

Employee pension (厚生年金), paid for life on top of the basic pension. The same earnings-related part is used in the disability and survivors' pensions. Leaving Japan for good? The lump-sum withdrawal still exists, see our pension guide.
Sickness allowance (傷病手当金, shobyo teatekin): off work for an illness or injury outside work, you get two-thirds of your daily standard pay from day 4, after 3 days in a row off, for up to 1 year and 6 months in total.
Maternity allowance (出産手当金, shussan teatekin): two-thirds of your daily standard pay for the days you take off from 42 days before the birth (98 for twins or more) to 56 days after.

Two side effects: your spouse's company may stop its family allowance (家族手当) once you're no longer a dependant, and an iDeCo needs a category change with your provider, or contributions stop. More on the insurance side in our health insurance guide.

The 3-year premium support (保険料調整制度)

There's a cushion, but it's narrow. An employer can now pay more than half of a part-timer's health and pension premiums, and the system gives the extra back to the employer. Your future pension isn't reduced. The conditions:

the employer is newly covered: it opted in from October 2026, or it comes under the wider rules from October 2027 onwards. Companies already covered at 51+ don't qualify, so the worker in our example doesn't get it;
your standard monthly pay is ¥126,000 or less;
the employer applies for it (you can't);
it lasts 3 years in total. In years 1 and 2 your share is 25% to 48% instead of 50%, depending on your pay grade (36% at the ¥104,000 grade), and in year 3 the reduction is halved.

What to do now

Read your contract. The weekly hours are your line now.
Ask HR whether the company is a 特定適用事業所, or when it becomes one.
Talk numbers with your family: the ¥1.3 million health line, the ¥1.36 million tax line, any family allowance.
Do the maths both ways with the salary calculator. If 20 hours is on the table, find your break-even (23 hours in our example) or stay clearly under 20. The awkward spot is "20 hours, exactly".

The ¥1.06 million wall is gone. The hours wall is right where it was, and now you know what it costs and what it buys.