Japanese Wages Rise in September

Japan’s real wages increased for the third straight month in September but summer bonuses fell from last year, the government said Monday, amid uncertainty over whether consumption can be significantly boosted to revive the economy.

Average inflation-adjusted wages grew 0.5 percent from a year earlier, as nominal wages gained 0.6 percent to 265,527 yen ($2,153), the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said in a preliminary report.

Summer bonuses dropped 2.8 percent to 356,791 yen after they increased last year.

Companies have increasingly employed part-timers or rehired the elderly, causing downward pressure on bonuses per person, the ministry said.

The data comes as the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe presses firms to spend their record profits on salaries and investment to help revive the economy, with households facing higher costs for imported goods due to the weak yen and seeing their purchasing power dented by last year’s sales tax hike.

via Mainichi

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza