TOKYO — Overtime hours in Japan fell 7.4% in April, the largest monthly decline since January 2013, when comparable data was first collected.
According to the monthly labor survey published on Friday by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, workers at establishments with five or more employees put in an average of 10.1 hours of overtime in April, with total working hours decreasing 1.5%.
The new coronavirus outbreak has been curtailing economic activity in Japan for months now. In late February, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe requested schools to close, forcing companies to accommodate parents who suddenly needed to work from home.
Many experts see the pandemic as an opportunity to push the government’s labor reforms even further.
The education and hospitality sectors were among the industries with the steepest decrease in overtime hours, with respective declines of 28.1% and 21.1% from the previous month. Hotels in particular have been hard hit as tourism has ground to a halt. Restaurants and bars, meanwhile, were asked to close or cut their hours when the state of emergency was declared on April 7. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is incentivizing establishments to stay closed until May 31.
Despite coronavirus cases inundating hospitals in other countries, Japan’s medical, healthcare and welfare sector saw a decline in overtime hours of 11.3%. Overtime in the finance and insurance industries rose the most, by 14%.
Non-scheduled pay — the amount paid for overtime work — was 19,286 yen (about $180), a decrease of 4.1%, which was also the steepest-ever drop. Total cash salary has been less affected by the coronavirus closures, increasing 0.1% to 281,812 yen.
The proportion of part-time workers was 31.27%, a decrease of 0.49 points from the same month last year. Businesses may be reluctant to hire part-timers, who are sensitive to economic contractions, leading to a second consecutive month of decline.