# How much are Honda workers paid here and Japan?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-are-honda-workers-paid-here-and-japan/720393>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 19, 2015, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-are-honda-workers-paid-here-and-japan/720393 "2015-05-19T23:16:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2015, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-are-honda-workers-paid-here-and-japan/720393/21 "2015-05-22T14:33:10Z")

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From the cached page of the website [heikinnenshu.jp](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tpn0r6MzaTgJ:heikinnenshu.jp/kogyo/honda.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) (“averageannualsalary”.jp):

> [@](#):
>
> ホンダ（本田技研工業）の年収の平均は、773万円でした。

The average annual salary for Honda (Honda Giken Kougyou) was 7,730,000 yen. That seems to have been for the year Heisei 25, two years ago. At least one other website I saw on the main search page seemed to back up that number but given methodological variance and purchasing-power adjustment, we should still consider a wide band around that number to get the “real” salary.

Using today’s exchange rate, that’s a salary of about 64,000 USD. That seems higher than US average salaries, but again, the error bands are wide here. Wages might be roughly comparable.

But for international trade, it’s not just nominal wages that are important. Current monetary policy in Japan under Prime Minister Abe and Governor Kuorda of the Bank of Japan have weakened the yen, which has made Japanese exports more competitive on world markets. This means that cars built domestically in Japan cost less for buyers, relative to international purchasing power. Japanese domestic automakers are experiencing strong profits at the moment. Before the current period of Abe-nomics, the yen was so strong that it made sense to build factories abroad (for example, in the US) but now that the yen is weaker, the same workers paid the same nominal salaries might cost the company less money and earn them more profit if more cars are built in Japan and sold overseas.

International trade has a lot of moving parts.

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