Another factor that could weigh on the recovery in consumption is that, unlike durable goods consumption, only some of the services that people had temporarily stopped consuming are expected to recover after COVID-19 subsides. At this point, let us take a closer look at developments in the employment situation, which underpin private consumption.
The left-hand side of Chart 6 shows that the employmentrelated diffusion index in the Economy Watchers Survey has deteriorated significantly since the turn of 2020. Almost simultaneously, the real wage income of employees has also declined. The right-hand side of the chart shows that, having stopped declining temporarily, the unemployment rate for July was 2.9 percent.