Student ID: 21D18254 Name: Yifei Cai Lecture name: Global_RD Session:1

In the lecture, we met the CTO of Ericsson Japan company, which is one of leading players in
telecommunication technology. I highly appreciate to his lecture about the life as an PhD career in
a huge international cooperation. I was quite relieved when hearing the lecturer saying that PhD is
highly valuable and appealing to have in companies, especially when we want to get a higher
position. To be honest, I am highly motivated by this comment because I heard so much
information saying traditional Japanese companies do not evaluate PhD holder as good as the other
developed countries.
In order to find out whether these is any difference in how foreign and Japanese companies treat
PhD holders, I searched the average income data in the United States, China, and Japan. In the
case of the United States, the average income of bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, doctorate
degree, and profession degree are 71155, 87123, 124879, and 149837 US dollars, respectively, in
2021 [1]. In the case of China, lower income is expected as a less developed country, the average
starting salary for bachelor’s degree, master’s Degree, doctorate degree are 5825, 10113, and
14823 RMB, respectively in 2021 [2]. Last but not least, in the case of Japan, the starting salary
for bachelor’s degree and master’s Degree are 210,000 and 238,900, respectively, in 2021. The
data source is the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan(厚⽣労働省); however, there
is no available data about that of the PhD holders.
There are two interesting aspects of these data. The first aspect is the fact that the income
information of PhD holders is well-investigated and available in many sources in the cases of the
United States and China. On the other hand, I could not find any reliable PhD income statistics in
Japan after several tens of minutes of search on Internet. Even the Ministry of Health, Labour and
Welfare of Japan only releases the data up to master’s degree. What’s more, most of the income
statistics by level of education attainment in Japan are shown by categories: “with bachelor’s
degree” and “education level under bachelor’s degree”. The fact that the income of PhD holders
in Japan is not even well-investigated and open to the public really disappointed me.
The second aspect is the salary difference between the PhD holders and the others. In the cases of
the United States and China, there is a significantly huge salary gap between the PhD holders and
the other degrees. For instance, the gap is approximately 76% and 154% in the United State and
China. In the case of Japan, the starting salary of Toyota, one of the leading companies in Japan,
is adopted for comparison. In Toyota, the starting monthly salary for bachelor’s degree holder and
Phd holder is 208,000 and 264,000 yen, respectively [4]. The difference is 27%, which is much
lower than that of the other two countries.
Salary is not the only evaluation criteria, while it indirectly reflects how much the employee is
evaluated and expected from the employer. Therefore, it is necessary to know about the salary
system for the PhD holders, in Japanese companies before job application.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184242/mean-earnings-by-educational-
attainment/#:~:text=In%202021%20the%20mean%20earnings,earnings%20of%2042%2C851%
20U.S.%20dollars.
[2] https://shiyanjia.com/knowledge/articleinfo-2584.html
[3] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/itiran/roudou/chingin/kouzou/19/01.html
[4] https://www.toyota-recruit.com/saiyo/recruit/info/