More prefectures will introduce an allowance in April to alleviate the burden of utility costs for employees working from home, a Jiji Press survey showed Thursday.
Twelve of the 47 prefectures will introduce the allowance next month. The 12 include Tokyo and Fukuoka, while the allowance is already available at Hokkaido, Ishikawa, Hyogo and 12 others, which introduced it in April last year.
Among 20 major cities, such an allowance is available only for employees of the municipal government of Osaka, which introduced it in April 2024.
The survey was conducted from Jan. 22 to March 3.
The amount of the allowance is set at ¥3,000 per month by all prefectures, except Saitama, which will provide up to ¥3,000, starting next month. National government workers currently receive ¥3,000 in remote work allowance per month.
Of local governments that are not considering introducing the allowance, many said that the number of employees who meet the same payment requirements as national government workers, such as the number of remote work days per month, is limited.
For cities, it is apparently difficult to implement remote work because of strong demand for over-the-counter services for local residents.
Additionally, even in local governments where the allowance is already available, the number of employees receiving it is zero or minimal.
Hiroaki Inatsugu, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo who is an expert on public employee programs, said that the number of remote work allowance recipients is small due chiefly to “delays in digitalization by local governments.”
Amid the serious shortage of people willing to become local government workers, Inatsugu emphasized the significance of a remote work allowance, saying, “Making the allowance available allows local governments to show students seeking a job that they have an environment that’s friendly to remote work.”
