Minimum wage in Okinawa 2019

The Okinawa Labor Bureau has decided to increase the minimum hourly wage in the prefecture by ¥28 to ¥790 per hour starting on Oct. 3rd. The current minimum is ¥762 per hour. The increase of ¥28 is the highest on record. However, the minimum wage in Okinawa is still the lowest in the nation, the average being ¥901. The highest minimum wage is in Tokyo at ¥1,013 per hour.

Okinawa is not alone. There are other prefectures that have set the lowest minimum wage the same as Okinawa at ¥790 per hour. They are Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Yamagata, Tottori, Shimane, Ehime, Kochi, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki and Kagoshima. Local labor unions had demanded the new minimum wage at ¥1,000 per hour but the Labor Bureau disagreed and declined to reconsider its decision.