Who Gets the Raise? Japan's Public Works Pay Rates and the Wages of Security Guards

Japan's government sets the daily wage that cost estimates for public works assume for each trade in each prefecture, including traffic guards employed by security companies. Between FY2012 and FY2025 this official rate for traffic guards more than doubled. Using the rates, the Basic Survey on Wage Structure and minimum wages for the 47 prefectures from 2012 to 2025, with an analysis plan written before any test was run, I ask how much of the rise reached guards' pay. Security guards' pay per 8 hours, including bonuses, rose by 29.2 percent, less than building cleaners' pay and the minimum wage, and fell from 1.14 to 0.71 times the official rate; within prefectures the gap widened by about 3.9 percent a year. Pay did not rise more where the rate rose more, but the rate rose by similar proportions everywhere, which leaves that test little power. The rate was no more closely tied to guards' pay than to the pay of building cleaners, another occupation outside these rates. Guards' pay moved with the minimum wage instead, though not in every check. By the survey's own definitions its security guards are facility and personal guards. For the occupation that includes traffic guards, published from 2020, pay rose by 5.1 percent between 2020 and 2025 while the rate rose by 28.6 percent, although an analysis added later hints that its pay is more closely tied to the rate than cleaners' pay is. Guards' pay has not kept pace with the official rate.