Minimum Wage in Japan 2026 by Prefecture: Real Purchasing Power for SSW and TITP Workers

The fiscal 2026 minimum wage for all 47 prefectures in Japan, with start dates and what it means per month for SSW and TITP workers. Plus the illegal-deduction trap many Vietnamese workers face — how to spot it and who to call.

Updated October 2026: Every prefecture raised its minimum wage for fiscal 2026, by ¥54 to ¥65 an hour, with the new rates starting between 1 October and 2 December 2026. The table now lists all 47 prefectures with the new rate and its start date, and the help lines below have been checked against official pages.

The numbers that determine your monthly check

If you're in Japan on a Specified Skilled Worker (特定技能, tokutei ginou) visa, in the Technical Intern Training Program (技能実習, ginou jisshu), or in an entry-level job, there's a good chance your pay sits close to the prefectural minimum wage. So it's worth knowing that number exactly, and this year it moved a lot.

For fiscal 2026 (令和8年度), all 47 prefectures went up by ¥54 to ¥65 an hour. The national weighted average is now ¥1,177, up ¥56 from ¥1,121: the second-biggest jump since Japan started setting yearly guideline amounts in 1978. The top rate is Tokyo's ¥1,280; the lowest is Miyazaki's ¥1,085.

2026 minimum wage by prefecture (hourly, JPY)

Here's the full list, ranked. One catch: the new rates don't all start on the same day. Each prefecture has its own start date (発効日), anywhere from 1 October to 2 December 2026, and until that date the previous rate (fifth column) still applies.

* Approx. monthly = new hourly rate × 40 hours × 52 weeks ÷ 12 months (about 173 hours), rounded to the nearest ¥1,000. That's before overtime (at least 25% extra), night work or allowances. The minimum wage is a floor: your employer can pay you more per hour, never less.

The Tokyo trap — why higher wages don't mean more money saved

Tokyo's ¥1,280 an hour is about 18% more than Miyazaki's ¥1,085 and about 17% more than Akita's ¥1,090. The gap is real, but it keeps shrinking: the lowest rate is now 84.8% of the highest, and the ministry notes that ratio has improved 12 years in a row.

Here's what the same 40-hour week pays per month in a few places people often end up:

So a full-time minimum-wage job in Tokyo pays roughly ¥30k a month more than the same job in Fukuoka or Akita. Whether you actually keep more at the end of the month comes down mostly to rent: a share-house room or company dorm in Tokyo usually costs more than its equivalent in a regional city, and that difference can eat the whole ¥30k. We've dropped the city-by-city "savable" estimates that used to sit here, because rent, dorm fees and food vary too much from one contract to the next to give you a number we'd stand behind. Do the math with your own figures instead:

• Start from the monthly figure above, or better, your real hours × your real rate.
• Take off social insurance and tax (next section).
• Take off rent or dorm fee, utilities, phone, food and transport, using your actual contract and receipts.
• Ask whether your commute is reimbursed. In a big city, that alone changes the picture.

What you actually take home

Before anything reaches your bank, your employer deducts social insurance: the employee pension (厚生年金, kosei nenkin, 18.3% split half-and-half with your employer, so 9.15% for you), health insurance (roughly 4.6% to 5.3% for your half, depending on the prefecture), employment insurance (0.5% in fiscal 2026) and, since April 2026, the child-rearing support levy (子ども・子育て支援金, kodomo kosodate shienkin, 0.115% for your half). If you're under 40, that adds up to roughly 14–15% of your pay.

A worked example with our calculator's 2026 rules: a full-time minimum-wage job in Fukuoka (about ¥193k gross a month, single, under 40) loses about ¥28.6k to social insurance and well under ¥1k to income tax, so roughly ¥164k lands in your account in your first year. From your second year, residence tax (住民税, juminzei), based on the previous year's income, adds about ¥6.6k a month, bringing you to around ¥157k.

For your own numbers, including residence tax, use the take-home calculator.

The trap that Vietnamese workers must know

If you came to Japan through a broker, which is common on the technical intern route, check your contract and payslip for hidden deductions: dormitory fees, "training fees", repayments of a debt you took on to get the job. Some workers see a big slice of their pay disappear before it ever reaches them. Japanese labour law is very clear about this.

What the Labour Standards Act (労働基準法, rodo kijun ho) says:

• Article 24: your wages must be paid in full, directly to you. Apart from deductions set by law (taxes, social insurance), your employer can only take something off your pay under a written agreement with the union representing a majority of the workplace's workers, or with an elected majority representative (a 労使協定). "We told you when you arrived" doesn't count.
• Article 16: an employer can't make you sign a contract that sets a penalty or a fixed amount of damages if you break it.
• Article 17: an employer can't offset your wages against an advance or loan you got on condition of working for them.

So anyone telling you "you owe us money before you can leave", or holding back your pay to cover a debt, is on the wrong side of the law. Help is available in Vietnamese:

• OTIT mother-language hotline (外国人技能実習機構 母国語相談), for technical interns. Vietnamese: 0120-250-168, Monday to Friday 11:00–19:00 and Saturday 9:00–17:00 (answering machine outside those hours).
• Consultation dial for foreign workers (外国人労働者向け相談ダイヤル, run by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare), for any problem with your working conditions. Vietnamese: 0570-001-706, weekdays 10:00–15:00 except 12:00–13:00. Call charges apply.
• Working Conditions Hotline (労働条件相談ほっとライン), free, for evenings and weekends. Vietnamese: 0120-531-406, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday to Sunday (weekdays 17:00–22:00, weekends and holidays 9:00–21:00).
• FRESC (外国人在留支援センター, Foreign Residents Support Center) in Yotsuya, Tokyo. Its main line, 0570-011-000 (weekdays 9:00–17:00, call charges apply), routes you to the offices based there, including the Tokyo Labour Bureau's consultation and support office for foreigners, which works in Vietnamese among other languages.

Path forward: SSW to higher-skilled visa

Plenty of people on SSW or TITP have their eye on the "Engineer / Specialist in Humanities / International Services" status (技術・人文知識・国際業務, gijinkoku). It can work, but the requirements are about your background and the job, not about how many years you've spent in Japan:

1. Education or experience that matches the job. Typically a university degree (or equivalent education) related to the work, or documented professional experience in that field.
2. A real job that uses it, such as engineering, IT, translation or marketing, with an employer ready to hire you for that role.
3. Proven language level for language-based jobs. For applications filed from 15 April 2026, if the employer is in immigration's "category 3 or 4" (in most cases, companies that aren't listed on a stock exchange and withhold less than ¥10 million of income tax a year) and the job mainly uses language skills with people, like translation, interpreting or a hotel front desk, you have to prove a CEFR B2 level in the language used. For Japanese, JLPT N2 or higher counts.

Pay after a switch depends entirely on the job and the company, so we won't promise you a number. Whether you can change status directly from where you are now also depends on your situation, so ask before you quit anything: the Immigration Services Agency's information centre (外国人在留総合インフォメーションセンター) answers in Vietnamese at 0570-013904, weekdays 8:30–17:15.

Quick sanity check

Plug your hourly rate and hours into our take-home calculator and compare with what actually lands in your bank account. If the gap is big and your payslip shows deductions you never agreed to in writing, ask for a breakdown, keep every payslip and contract, and call one of the lines above. And check your prefecture's start date in the table: once it has passed, your hourly pay should be at least the new rate.

Sources

• MHLW — Regional minimum wages, FY2026 national list (令和8年度地域別最低賃金の全国一覧)
• MHLW — FY2026 minimum wage by prefecture and effective dates (PDF)
• MHLW — FY2026 minimum wage recommendations for all prefectures (令和８年度最低賃金額答申)
• Japan Pension Service — Employee pension premium table (厚生年金保険料額表)
• Kyōkai Kenpo — FY2026 health insurance rates by prefecture
• Kyōkai Kenpo — Child-rearing support levy rate (子ども・子育て支援金率)
• MHLW — FY2026 employment insurance rates (令和8年度雇用保険料率) (PDF)
• e-Gov — Labour Standards Act (労働基準法), Articles 16, 17 and 24
• OTIT — Mother-language consultation for technical interns (母国語相談)
• MHLW — Consultation services for foreign workers (外国人労働者向け相談機関)
• Immigration Services Agency — FRESC contact numbers
• Immigration Services Agency — Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services (技術・人文知識・国際業務)
• Immigration Services Agency — Immigration information centre (外国人在留総合インフォメーションセンター)