Recently, it also has begun to be backed by improvement in the employment and income situation. Namely, the employment situation continues to improve moderately but steadily, with both the unemployment rate and the ratio of job offers to applicants having almost recovered to the level observed prior to the Lehman shock.
There has also been an increasing sense of a labor shortage on the firms’ side (Chart 4). This improvement in the employment situation has started to influence wages. The year-on-year rate of change in nominal wages per employee has gradually stopped declining on the whole, partly due to growth in summer bonuses for the first time in three years.