In Okinawa Prefecture, inbound tourism consumption and business fixed investment in the private sector, including the construction of new hotels, have been increasing amid the rising trend in the number of domestic and international tourists, despite a temporary fall in the number brought about by typhoons in July. These represent the driving force for the growth of Okinawa's economy.
With Japan's economic expansion, supply-demand conditions in the labor market have tightened steadily. Firms' perception of a labor shortage suggested by the diffusion indexes (DIs) for employment conditions in the June 2018 Tankan (Short-Term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan) has heightened in a wide range of industries, and the unemployment rate has declined to about 2.5 percent.