Japan Press Weekly

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2015 February 25 - March 3 [ECONOMY]

Household income and consumption far away from recovery: gov’t economic indicators

Various government statistics regarding economic activities that were released on February 27 indicated that most people have yet to feel they are on their way to benefiting from an economic recovery.

The Internal Affairs Ministry’s survey on the household economy shows that a family with more than two members spent 289,847 yen on average last month. Real household consumption, however, decreased by 5.1% from a year earlier, a 10-month consecutive drop since April 2014 when the consumption tax rate increased to 8% from 5%.

In the same survey, the nominal income of working households increased by 0.4% to 440,226 yen, but when adjusted for inflation, it decreased for 16 consecutive months by 2.3%.

Meanwhile, it came to light in the ministry’s labor force survey that the unemployment rate increased by 0.2% to 3.6% for the first time in four months.

The labor ministry announced that last month’s job vacancy rate stood at 1.14. The rate is hovering at the level of 1.10 since June last year. The job opening ratio for full-time jobs was 0.70.