Over the last five years, Yokohama-based Lasertec Corp. has delivered what much of Japan Inc. hasn't in decades: big pay rises.
The maker of chip-measuring equipment has boosted salaries by about a third overall since 2016. Employees at its main unit, many of them engineers, make on average just under ¥14 million ($121,500) — more than three times the national average of ¥4.3 million.
Lasertec is among a subset of Japanese firms, often in specialized areas such as technology, at which pay is increasingly tied to employee performance and not determined by seniority or the base pay set in annual labor talks.
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