Japanese cash earnings rose 3.4 percent in June, and 232,445 yen of the 531,677 yen average was the summer bonus

The release runs to seventeen pages and prints the real wage increase twice.

Deflated by the consumer price index that excludes imputed rent, real cash earnings in June were 1.6 percent higher than a year earlier. Deflated by the all-items index, they were 1.7 percent higher. The ministry publishes both, states the reason for each, and leaves the choice to the reader: the first restricts itself to goods and services actually traded, the second exists for international comparison.

Nominal earnings did not need a deflator. They rose 3.4 percent.

What the 531,677 yen is made of

Average monthly cash earnings at establishments with five or more employees came in at 531,677 yen in the preliminary figures for June, published on Wednesday morning in Tokyo.

Most of the difference between that and an ordinary month is the summer bonus. Special payments were 232,445 yen of the total, up 3.5 percent on a year earlier. Contractual earnings, the part that arrives every month, were 299,232 yen and up 3.4 percent, and scheduled earnings within that were 279,189 yen and up 3.4 percent.

At establishments with 30 or more employees the total was 646,206 yen, up 3.3 percent.

Full-time workers averaged 715,604 yen, up 3.6 percent. Part-time workers averaged 129,042 yen, up 3.5 percent, and their hourly scheduled pay was 1,444 yen, up 4.3 percent. That last line is the fastest rate in the release.

The gap between two ways of counting

Section three of the same page reports the same quarter on a same-sample basis, following only establishments that reported in both periods.

On that measure total cash earnings rose 4.4 percent rather than 3.4. For full-time workers the figure is 4.5 percent against the headline 3.6. The direction reverses on the scheduled component, where the same-sample number is 3.0 percent and the headline is 3.4.

The ministry publishes both and does not reconcile them.

The rest of the table

Hours fell. Total hours worked were down 0.3 percent on a year earlier, with scheduled hours unchanged and overtime hours up 0.5 percent.

Regular employment rose 0.8 percent, and the share of part-time workers was 0.20 points higher than a year earlier. The survey covered 33,059 establishments and 21,749 answered, a response rate of 65.8 percent.

Read across the ministry's own monthly table, June is the fifth consecutive month in which total cash earnings at establishments with five or more employees ran at 3 percent or better. May was revised to 3.3 percent in this release.

These are preliminary figures. The ministry states on the first page that they may be revised in the final report.