What changed when Japanese employees started exercising

Most research on exercise and earnings comes from the United States and Germany. What happens at work when employees in Japan start exercising? Here is a Japanese study published in 2026.

What we know

Kashima and colleagues used JILLS-i, a Japanese panel survey. They followed 6,576 full-time regular employees aged 35 to 54 over 2023 and 2024.

They looked at how two measures changed before and after people’s exercise habits changed:

• Work engagement: how enthusiastic and absorbed people feel in their work. Think of it as motivation at work.
• Presenteeism: being at work but not performing at full capacity because of health or similar reasons.

The findings:

• People who started exercising showed higher work engagement (β=0.324 at wave 2, P<0.001).
• There was no significant difference in presenteeism.
• People who stopped exercising showed lower work engagement (β=−0.219 at wave 0).

How to read it

The study uses an event-study design. It compares the same people before and after they started exercising, and also compares them with people who did not start during the same period. This helps remove fixed differences between individuals and changes over time, so it is closer to cause and effect than a simple comparison. Still, it is not an experiment in which exercise was assigned by lottery. For example, people whose workload had eased might have started exercising and regained motivation at the same time.

The key point is that the two measures moved differently. Motivation changed, but on-the-job productivity did not. This study does not show that exercise improves work performance. What it shows is that people who started exercising became more engaged with their work.

The study also did not measure income. Surveys in the US and Germany show that people who exercise tend to earn more, but we have not found any Japanese study on exercise and earnings. For Japan, what we know so far stops at changes in engagement.

Even so, this is data from ordinary Japanese employees, and it found an opposite change when people stopped exercising. That makes it worth knowing. Keeping a habit going seems to matter as much as starting it.

It is also worth noting the age group. The study covered full-time employees aged 35 to 54, a stage when work and family demands often peak. That is exactly when exercise tends to drop off, which makes the link with engagement all the more relevant.

A small step for today

The study looked at people who started an exercise habit. You do not need to begin with something big. Focus on a form you can keep.

• Make “Moved for 5+ minutes” your daily baseline.
• On days with more room, add “Walked 8,000+ steps,” or “Did strength training” two to three times a week.
• If you stop during a busy period, do not decide that you have quit. Log the days you moved even for five minutes, and keep the thread going.

The finding that engagement fell among people who stopped exercising is a reminder that a thin thread of habit is still worth keeping. It does not need to be perfect. Just aim for more days that are not zero.

Sources

• [A5] Kashima, Takada, Matsuo & So (2026) The consequences of changes in exercise habits on work engagement and presenteeism: Evidence from an event-study analysis using Japanese longitudinal data. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health.
• [A1] Kosteas (2012) The Effect of Exercise on Earnings: Evidence from the NLSY. Journal of Labor Research.
• [A2] Lechner (2009) Long-run labour market and health effects of individual sports activities. Journal of Health Economics.