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Mark Kennedy's avatar

Thanks for sharing your insights. I knew that there had to be catch when I saw the headlines. The devil in the details again!

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David B's avatar

I enjoyed this very much. I was recently looking at some population forecasts and it got me thinking about consumption. Are there any stats on per capita consumption available? I would expect GDP to decline with the declining population, unless our kids start eating more and wasting money on fast fashion at an ever increasing rate.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

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Richard Katz's avatar

Per capita consumer spending per capita has been more or less flat since 2013 with a dip during Covid

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RogerCMcDonald's avatar

thank you for this. Headlines don’t often tell the story.

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Mathieu Dumoulin's avatar

The Japanese government has to be aware of all of this. Their passivity is troubling.

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Richard Katz's avatar

With an election coming up, they'll want to use these numbers to show what a great job they're doing.

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Julian Smith's avatar

Great article as always! What's caused the divergence between number of employees and total real employee compensation? Is this mostly due to falling real wages or a change in the structure of employment?

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Richard Katz's avatar

Well, it' clearly falling real wages on average. Some of it is inflation. But whether it's also the replacement of higher-paid workers with lower-paid workers is something I'll have to look up in the data. But I'm on semi-vacation now.

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Mathieu Dumoulin's avatar

Fewer well paid full time roles and more contract/part time workers is a likely explanation. Could also be less generous seniors based salary increases

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Julian Smith's avatar

Thanks! Enjoy your semi-vacation!

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Richard Katz's avatar

In the last few years, it's mostly the effect of inflation and the 2019 tax hike. Earlier, it was mostly the rise in the share of lower-paid non-regulars and the 2014 tax hike which prevented the average real wage from rising.

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Julian Smith's avatar

Thank you for checking that!

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