I would like to highlight the following three points as the recent change in the environment surrounding prices. 5  First, labor market conditions have tightened significantly, with the annual rate of increase in hourly wages of part-time employees reaching around 2.5 percent; as a result, the upward pressure of the rise in firms' costs on prices has been increasing steadily.
Under such circumstances, in parallel with the aforementioned efforts to streamline their business process, an increasing number of firms have been working on passing on the increased costs that they cannot absorb to their sales prices (Chart 9).