Japan Income Percentile & Deviation Score Calculator
Enter your annual income to see what percentile and deviation score ("hensachi") it corresponds to among salaried workers in Japan, based on the National Tax Agency's salary distribution survey.
Salaried workers by income band and share (2024/Reiwa 6)
Number of workers employed the full year (both sexes) and their share, by annual income band, from the National Tax Agency survey.
| Income band | Workers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Up to ¥1,000,000 | 3,934k | 7.7% |
| Over ¥1,000,000 – ¥2,000,000 | 5,707k | 11.1% |
| Over ¥2,000,000 – ¥3,000,000 | 6,767k | 13.2% |
| Over ¥3,000,000 – ¥4,000,000 | 8,258k | 16.1% |
| Over ¥4,000,000 – ¥5,000,000 | 7,870k | 15.3% |
| Over ¥5,000,000 – ¥6,000,000 | 6,059k | 11.8% |
| Over ¥6,000,000 – ¥7,000,000 | 3,907k | 7.6% |
| Over ¥7,000,000 – ¥8,000,000 | 2,710k | 5.3% |
| Over ¥8,000,000 – ¥9,000,000 | 1,741k | 3.4% |
| Over ¥9,000,000 – ¥10,000,000 | 1,208k | 2.4% |
| Over ¥10,000,000 – ¥15,000,000 | 2,306k | 4.5% |
| Over ¥15,000,000 – ¥20,000,000 | 576k | 1.1% |
| Over ¥20,000,000 – ¥25,000,000 | 147k | 0.3% |
| Over ¥25,000,000 | 174k | 0.3% |
Source: Japan National Tax Agency, "Survey on Private Sector Salaries" (2024), Table 21
Tips
- The survey only covers workers employed for the full year, so mid-year job changers, retirees, and the self-employed are not represented in this distribution.
- A deviation score of 50 corresponds to the average income of ¥4.78 million; a score of 60 is roughly the top 16%, and 70 is roughly the top 2.3%.
- Income varies a lot by age and tenure, so for comparisons within your own generation or industry, check more specific statistics.
- The percentile figure uses the actual distribution via interpolation, so it tracks reality more closely than the deviation score, which assumes a normal distribution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Side Note — Why "deviation scores" are used for income, not just exams
In Japan, "hensachi" (deviation score) is best known from university entrance exams, but it is really just a general statistical way of expressing how far a value sits from the average of a data set. Converting the mean to 50 and one standard deviation to 10 works for test scores, but equally for height, weight, or income — anything roughly bell-shaped. Knowing your income deviation score turns a vague sense of "doing okay" into a concrete number relative to the whole working population.
The survey behind this tool, Japan's "Survey on Private Sector Salaries," has been run by the National Tax Agency every year since 1949, drawing on real payroll withholding data rather than self-reported surveys — which tends to make it more reliable than opinion polling. In the 2024 edition, the average annual income for full-year workers was ¥4.78 million, up 3.9% year over year, one of the larger increases in recent years.
That average, though, hides a lopsided shape: most workers actually cluster in the ¥3–4 million band, and a relatively small number of very high earners pull the average upward. As a result, more than half of all workers earn less than the ¥4.78 million average. The percentile view captures this skew directly, showing you more intuitively what share of workers actually earn less than you — something a deviation score alone can obscure.