Employees in Japan worked fewer hours after the country started implementing a law limiting overtime, although many companies have exceeded those mandatory caps.
Japanese policymakers passed the Work Style Reform Legislation in 2018 to address "karoshi," or death from overwork. The overtime limits became effective for large employers—generally those with more than 50 employees—in April 2019 and for small employers the following April.
The law, with some exceptions, established a basic limit on overtime, or work beyond eight hours a day and 40 hours a week, to 45 hours of overtime a month and 360 hours of overtime per year.
In special circumstances, employers may extend work beyond these limits on a temporary basis. Employees may not exceed the basic overtime limit more than six months per year.
A relatively narrow exemption to the overtime limits applies to highly skilled, well-paid professionals.
Lower Average Working Hours
Due to the law, monthly average working hours per employee declined from 142.2 to 139.1 in 2019 and further to 135.1 in 2020, noted Aki Tanaka, a Littler attorney in Boston focused on international employment and labor law. Overtime and other nonscheduled monthly hours declined by more than 13 percent in 2020, the Japanese government reported.
In response to a new mandatory requirement to take five days' annual leave, the percentage of those taking annual leave days has increased from 52.4 percent to 56.3 percent in 2020, Tanaka added.
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