中高年ホワイトカラーの賃金と「企業貢献度からみた生産性」に関する考察

抄録

Analysis of the seniority-based wage system that was applied in the past in Japan has made it possible to explain the distinctive Japanese wages curve, which has tilted more extensively than in any other country, in terms of the "security hypothesis" and the "experience hypothesis." However, the results of the survey conducted on this occasion into the current situation have brought to light a new hypothesis to the effect that we are approaching a state in which wages reflect productivity. The conventional hypothesis has it that wages are kept at a low level in relation to productivity when a worker is still young, and that when he reaches middle age and approaches retirement he receives higher wages that reflect his higher living costs and the intellectual skills he has acquired over the years. The shared awareness has been that productivity and wage accumulation coincide by the time a worker has reached retirement age.

Although productivity seen from the standpoint of contribution to the company as in this case is based on age classification, the precondition here is intellectual experience based on the gradual accumulation of years of company service. The data shows that the relationship between wages and productivity is such that wages exceed productivity soon after a person has joined a company, whereas productivity exceeds wages from the late twenties. It is only when a worker is in his fifties that wage levels exceed productivity, and this tendency is rapidly curtailed during the late fifties. Although productivity (i.e. contribution to the company) is examined with substitute indices (assessment according to the standards of personnel directors), an important fact that can be pointed out on this occasion is that there is no conspicuous deterioration in ability with advancing age in work categories such as General and Personnel Affairs, Accounting, and Marketing and Business. If in the future we see a closer relationship coming into being between productivity and wages (i.e. less of a separation between the two), one can well imagine that a qualitative transformation will occur in the significance of conventional age restrictions on employment, the retirement age of executives, and the system of fixed-age retirement itself.