Japan Food Sector "Assessing wage rises and ability to respond to rising..."

Research evidence excerpt

Japan Food Sector "Assessing wage rises and ability to respond to rising..."

Global Research

29 June 2026ab

Japan Food Sector Equities

JapanAssessing wage rises and ability to respond to

rising wages based on annual securities reports Food & Beverage

Rei Ihara

Analyst

rei.ihara@ubs.com

As annual securities reports have now been released, we analyse average +81-3-5208 6227

annual salaries, employee numbers, and the ratio of temporary employees

Ryunosuke Watanabe

While it is important to assess the cost impact of the Middle East situation, we also Associate Analyst

believe it is important to analyse the pace of wage rises and resilience to the associated ryunosuke.watanabe@ubs.com

cost increases in evaluating medium- to long-term competitiveness. Based on annual +81-3-5208 6243

securities reports for FY25, we analysed the pace of wage rises and resilience to cost

increases due to higher wages using: 1) average annual salary, 2) number of employees,

and 3) temporary employment ratio. We conclude: 1) the average annual salary in the

food sector continues to rise, albeit not at the growth rate seen in FY24; 2) possibly

reflecting efforts to secure personnel, companies with relatively low annual salaries

continue to show higher rates of salary growth; and 3) differences in resilience to wage

increases were observed between labour-intensive companies with low profit levels and

capital-intensive companies with high profit levels.

In FY25, average annual income rose, albeit not as much as in FY24

First, average annual salaries disclosed in securities reports can be somewhat misleading,

as they reflect a diverse mix of employees and salary levels differ between holding and

operating companies. The average annual salary for the 28 food companies shown in