The People Pages
Whose pay is it, and what was promised?
Every Japanese annual securities report carries a short table headed 従業員の状況 — the state of employees. It gives a headcount, an average age, an average length of service and an average annual salary. The table looks like a description of the company. It is a description of one legal entity: the one that signed the filing.
For a group whose parent is a holding company, that entity can be a few hundred people sitting above a workforce of tens of thousands. The salary printed beside the small number is real, audited and public. It is also not the figure most readers think it is. The same report, a few pages on, carries the sustainability section and its 指標及び目標 — the indicators and targets a company has chosen to be measured by, or has chosen not to.
This series reads those pages as they are printed, company by company, and says each time which population a number describes. Pieces are added here as they are filed.