Japan got a triple dose of sobering economic news yesterday as unemployment last month rose for the third straight month, prices kept sliding and household spending fell.
The country’s jobless rate climbed to 5.1 percent, hitting its highest level since January.
The number of jobless stood at 3.56 million, up 2.9 percent from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The number of people with jobs fell 0.8 percent to 62.69 million.
Meanwhile, deflation worsened last month as consumer prices accelerated their retreat. Japan’s core consumer price index, which excludes fresh food, fell 1.5 percent from the previous year, extending declines for a 14th straight month.
The results underscore an uneven recovery in the world’s second-biggest economy, where robust exports have yet to bolster hiring or domestic demand.
Government figures on Thursday showed that exports last month surged 40 percent thanks to growing demand in China and elsewhere in Asia.
“Viewed over several months, the [unemployment] trend remains virtually flat,” Goldman Sachs economist Chiwoong Lee said in a note to clients. “The pace of deterioration has eased ... but we have yet to see signs of improvement.”
The core CPI for Tokyo — considered a barometer of broader price trends — fell 1.6 percent this month, pointing toward another nationwide drop. The government’s new high school tuition breaks weighed heavily on prices, dragging education costs down 13 percent last month.
Separately, the government said household spending slipped 0.7 percent last month from a year earlier as families spent less on clothing, recreation and food.
A labor ministry report also showed deteriorating conditions for those looking for work. The ratio of job offers to job seekers stood at a seasonally adjusted 0.48 last month, down from 0.49 the previous month.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day