Japan: Consumer confidence falls to a near one-year low in July
Consumer sentiment inched down to 43.5 in July from 43.7 in June, surprising market analysts who expected it to rise to 47.8. The consumer confidence index measures consumers’ expectations for the next six months on a scale of 0–100; a figure of 100 indicates that all respondents see their living standards improving.
The slight deterioration in July came on the back of declines across all sub-indices except for income growth. Consumers were more pessimistic about their overall livelihood and were less willing to buy durable goods. Moreover, consumers were more downbeat about their employment prospects. Meanwhile, they were more optimistic about their income growth. Regarding prices, expectations of higher prices decreased slightly in July, with 81.5% of respondents expecting prices to trend higher (down 0.2 percentage points from last month’s survey).