Japan traffic-guard pay rates
Data > Japan traffic-guard pay rates
Japan's official daily pay rates for traffic guards from private security companies (Guard A and Guard B) on public works, for all 47 prefectures, FY2012 to FY2026, with monthly national job-openings figures for security occupations, March 2012 to August 2026.
Download the dataset (33 MB, zip, from Zenodo) · Code and documentation
| Source | Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism; Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare |
|---|---|
| Covers | FY2012 to FY2026; job openings March 2012 to August 2026 |
| Size | 1,410 rows of pay rates (15 years, 47 prefectures, 2 grades) |
| Format | CSV, with a documentation file and the code that builds it |
| Version | 1.0.0, published 29 October 2026 |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 (code: MIT) |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.23750536 (all versions) · 10.5281/zenodo.23750537 (this version) |
What it is
Every year Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism sets the public works design labour rates: the daily wage that government cost estimates assume for each construction trade in each prefecture. Two of those trades are traffic guards working for private security companies. Guard A has passed the national grade 1 or grade 2 traffic-guarding exam; Guard B is any other security company guard directing traffic.
This dataset turns the ministry's yearly PDF tables into one file for all 47 prefectures, and adds the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's monthly figures on job openings and job seekers in security occupations.
What it cannot be used to say
- The rates are wages, not prices. The ministry states that they cover only the wage paid to the worker and leave out the security company's overheads, insurance, training and profit, so they are well below what a client pays per guard-day.
- They are rates used to estimate public contract costs, not a record of what each guard was actually paid.
- Special rates set after the 2011 earthquake (Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima) and under a COVID-19 measure in the 2021 financial year are marked in the file.
- Almost every prefecture rises more than 15 percent between 2012 and 2013. This matches the ministry's own figure for that year and is not a data error.
- The job-openings figures cover security occupations in general, not traffic guards alone, and only jobs registered at Japan's public employment offices (Hello Work). They are national, not by prefecture.
How it was checked
- Every PDF was read twice with two different programs, and all 1,410 values agree.
- The job-openings series was checked where two occupation classifications overlap, from April 2022 to March 2023; for security occupations they give identical figures.
What is in the file
Pay-rate columns
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
table_year | The year the table is published for (FY2012-FY2026) |
effective_from | Month the rates took effect (YYYY-MM) |
pref_code, prefecture_ja, prefecture_en | Prefecture (standard codes 01-47) |
grade | A or B |
daily_rate_yen | Rate in yen for a regular 8-hour working day |
special_rate | yes if the source marks the figure as a special rate (see below) |
note | What the special rate is |
source_file, source_page | Where the figure is in data/raw/mlit/ |
Job-openings columns
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
month | YYYY-MM |
classification | Occupation classification the figure is published under (see below) |
occupation, occupation_ja, occupation_en | security or all |
measure | new_openings, active_openings, new_applicants, active_applicants, active_openings_ratio |
value | Number of people/openings, or the ratio |
source_file, source_sheet | Where the figure is in data/raw/mhlw/ |
Cite
Azom, Kazi Affnann (2026). japan-guard-price-panel: Japan's public works pay rates for traffic guards by prefecture, FY2012-FY2026, with job-openings data for security occupations (Version v1.0.0) [Data set]. Mercenomics. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23750537
The DOI above is for version 1.0.0. To always point to the latest version, use 10.5281/zenodo.23750536. Found an error? Report it on the Corrections page.