B. Virtuous Cycle of the Economy amid Longstanding Shortages of Labor Let me now turn to structural changes in Japan's economy. Since around 2017, amid longstanding shortages of labor, some distinctive developments continue to be observed, such as moderate growth of the economy, the positive output gap, non-deflationary price rises, and an increase in business fixed investment.
With that, there are periods, such as the current period, where various data provide a contradicting picture of the situation, leading to a particularly high level of uncertainty. The main figure that we track is obviously the National Accounts data, which outlines growth of GDP and its components.