Employees at Japanese corporations are likely to see their summer bonuses rise 0.5 percent this year from 2003 levels, Mizuho Securities Co. said Friday.
Mizuho Securities said the average bonus is expected to be around 421,000 yen, and worth 1.11 months of salary, up 0.01 month from 2003.
The brokerage attributed the increase to moves by several companies to skip pay-scale increases in exchange for bonus hikes.
However, total bonus payments are expected to decrease 0.6 percent to 14.82 trillion yen, due to an estimated 1.2 percent decrease in the number of employees who receive them, to 35.21 million, Mizuho Securities said.