Graduate hiring and starting salaries in Japan

One cohort, one start date

Employers recruit students in their penultimate university year and take them on together the following April, usually without reference to the subject they studied. Hiring is for membership of the company rather than for a specific role — assignment to a department typically happens after joining, and can be changed later by the employer.

The consequence is that the starting salary is a single published number applying to everyone in the cohort at a given degree level. Unlike mid-career pay, it is genuinely comparable between employers, which is why it is quoted so heavily in Japanese recruiting.

The recruitment calendar

Under the government-coordinated schedule that replaced the former employers' federation guideline, public recruitment activity opens in March of the penultimate year, selection from June, and formal offers from 1 October. In practice internships and early contact start much sooner, and the schedule is widely treated as a floor rather than a rule.

A naitei is more binding than it sounds

The informal offer — naitei — is not a non-binding expression of interest. Japanese courts treat it as a labour contract subject to a condition, so an employer that withdraws one is constrained in much the same way as an employer dismissing an existing employee. Students holding several offers are expected to decline the others, but a student who withdraws faces no comparable constraint.

Read the published figure carefully

The headline number is normally monthly scheduled pay, excluding bonus and overtime. Some employers instead publish a figure that already includes a fixed overtime allowance covering a set number of hours a month — which makes the salary look higher while meaning that those hours are unpaid at the margin. The allowance and the hours it covers must be stated; check them before comparing two offers.

Since 2023 starting salaries have moved unusually fast, as employers compete for a shrinking cohort. A figure from a survey a year or two old will understate the current market.

Common questions

Before you rely on this

• This is a summary, not legal advice. Japanese employment law changes, and several of the rules above were phased in on different dates for large and small employers. Check the current text, or take advice, before acting on it.
• Work rules matter as much as statute. Bonuses and retirement payouts are set by the employer's own rules, so two employers in the same industry can differ enormously while both complying fully with the law.

Other guides

Bonuses ・ Retirement lump sums ・ Graduate hiring ・ Paid leave ・ Overtime ・ Parental leave ・ Women in management ・ Reading salary figures ・ Contracts and dismissal ・ Annual securities reports ・ all guides.