One U.S. dollar could purchase 157.47 yen on Monday, June 17, 2024 (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Changes in the cost-of-living adjustments in U.S. service members’ pay in Japan will rise from nothing for the first time in Japan in nearly two years.
“Effective 16 June 2024 (to reflect in 01 July 2024 pay), changes in Japan COLA rates will be implemented. Notably, those Japan locations that previously were reduced to zero will be receiving COLA again,” U.S. Forces Japan posted on its official Facebook page Friday.
The new COLA rate for Japan was not available Monday. The online Overseas COLA Rate Lookup calculator was not updated, and U.S. Forces Japan did not reply to a phone call on Monday.
For more information about COLA rates in their areas, service members may contact their local command administrative personnel pay sections, USFJ stated in its Facebook post.
Service members in Japan have been without COLA — a tax-free allowance to help offset the costs of living in expensive areas overseas -- since Oct. 1, 2022. A strong U.S. dollar and a comparatively weak Japanese yen are partially behind the reduction in COLA. U.S. service members and their families, paid in dollars, usually paid less for essential items in Japan.
To help determine COLA, data is collected from active-duty service members and other representatives at locations outside the contiguous United States, according to the Defense Travel Management Office’s website. The Retail Price Schedule records the cost of approximately 150 goods and services whose local prices are collected annually by Country Allowance Coordinators.
The Living Pattern Survey asks service members to identify how and where they purchase certain goods and services. These location-specific surveys are conducted on a rotational basis every three years. Surveys run for approximately four weeks.
When military in March and April 2022 surveyed troops about their purchasing habits, the allowance had already fallen by 15% to 22% compared to 2021 rates.
A COLA increase this year would ease rising household costs on and off U.S. military bases, said one noncommissioned officer Monday.
“It’s a huge help, especially when it comes to the prices of everything in the commissary going up and then prices off base also going up,” Staff Sgt. Melvin Herrera-Lopez, 373rd Training Squadron, told Stars and Stripes outside of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service at Yokota. “So that helps take some of the burden off when it comes to actual usable income, so being able to use it towards bills and everything else.
A survey by research firm Teikoku Databank Ltd. found prices on 2,806 food items in Japan were scheduled to rise in April, according to a March 30 article by Japan Times. The rise was attributed to higher ingredient costs.
Processed meat manufacturer Itoham Foods Inc., for example, hiked prices on 220 items by 2% to 25%, the article stated.
