Salaries in Japan are very flat compared to the US with high-paying jobs often only paying 30-50% more than low-skill jobs. I'd also note that US minimum wage i

Salaries in Japan are very flat compared to the US with high-paying jobs often only paying 30-50% more than low-skill jobs. I'd also note that US minimum wage is $7.25 while Japan minimum wage is $8.67. Things are also different because relatively few married women are in the work force. From that, you could say that the average pay in Japan is much higher. In the US, wages stagnated for a couple decades and cost of living skyrocketed in the US as women entered the work force until it now takes 2 salaries to stay afloat vs only one in Japan (we'll exclude the unofficially high poverty rates). At the same time, US workers put in 41.3 hours per week for men and 36.3 hours per week for women (working 14% less time accounts for an enormous part of the earning difference between the sexes). In contrast, while the law officially puts the work day at 8 hours with statutory paid leave going up to about 3 weeks, most workers take little to no vacation and "voluntarily" work many more days and 30-50% longer hours per day than the US worker (though at the same time, productivity per hour may not always be high).