Japan June Consumer Confidence: Updated July 2, 2024.

 

Japan's June consumer confidence improves for first time in 3 months

Article Source  https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240701/p2g/00m/0bu/050000c

Ideas:

An increase of 0.2 is really not that much but the Cabinet Office does suggest that its no much as Japanese consumers still can't be happy with what is happening.

Despite all the thinking of Japanese being genki, positive and happy, maybe the last 30 years or so has changed the mindset of Japanese society. Or maybe Japanese society was never all that happy and positive.

It should be remembered that May had 5 weekends and there was the Golden Week period during May which might have helped with consumer confidence as people were out and about and not working for almost a week.

Income growth can also be attributed to slower increase in inflation, which helps with real income as Japanese households see they have a little more extra income as they didn't have to spend as much on whatever.

And yes, there might have been some wage increase affects as Japanese households, or at least the larger company employees were able to see increases in their wages.

But the problem is maybe many small and midsize company workers didn't see as big an increase as the large company workers did, which means the Japanese economy is still and economy of haves and have nots.

Other maybe a few countries globally, many workers around the world might feel their overall livelihoods are not what they want or need to live.

In a market economy increases in consumer prices could be because of an increase in demand of products as consumer are buying more, and its natural for companies to increase prices if consumers think the products are in high demand. But in Japan consumer spending is never where it should be, as consumer spending is always weaker than what it should be.

And then there is the Japanese situation, which Japan is a a resource-poor country and has to import much of what it needs from food, energy, raw materials and so on.

And because the Japanese yen is weak it causes import prices to be even higher than normal. And then of course there is the variance between the US key interest rate and the Japan key interest rate, which also causes the Japanese yen to remain weaker than what it should be.

Finally Japanese consumer confidence might never be like the 1980's and the free spending Japanese consumers, and the world and Japan has changed a lot, and going back to a main idea that Japanese society is not what it was even 10 or 20 years ago. its much different and Japanese society has had to live through many years of no real wage increases and real incomes not where they should be.

Have a nice day and be safe!