Employment and income situation  First, I will talk about developments in the employment and income situation. Supply-demand conditions in the labor market have continued to improve steadily, and employee income has increased moderately. According to the Labour Force Survey, the number of employees has been increasing, and the labor force participation of women and the elderly has been rising.
Against this backdrop, the active job openings-to-applicants ratio has risen steadily and a perception of labor shortage suggested by the diffusion index for employment conditions (the proportion of firms responding that employment was “excessive” minus the proportion of those responding that employment was “insufficient”) in the December 2015 Tankan (ShortTerm Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan) has heightened.