In May, Japanese household spending jumped 11.6% year-on-year, better than the + 10.9% rise expected by analysts and slowing compared to the + 13% growth in April.
The leap, on an annual basis, is explained by the base effect, that is, with the fact that this year’s numbers are compared to the decidedly negative ones of the same months of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic had blocked the global economy. causing the crash of macroeconomic data.
From the data released today it emerges that, in the month of May, and on average, the spending of families with two or more members in Japan stood at 281,063 yen, the equivalent of approximately 2,500 US dollars.
It should be noted that, in the month of May 2020, in the midst of the emergency phase of Covid-19, the expenses of Japanese families collapsed at a record rate of 16.2%, following the announcement with which the Japanese government had introduced the first state of emergency the previous month.
On the other hand, as emerged from a Bank of Japan report released last week, at the end of March 2021 the assets held by Japanese families jumped by 7.1% on an annual basis, to the all-time record of 1,946 trillion yen ( equivalent of $ 17 trillion), confirming how consumers have reduced their propensity to consume – already very narrow, even in good times – by favoring more for savings.
In particular, cash and deposits increased by 5.5% a
1,056 trillion yen, accounting for 54.3% of the asset securities held by households, at the maximum of each fiscal year end period (in Japan the fiscal year starts on April 1st and ends on March 31st of the following year) .
Returning to the data on consumer spending, the rise occurred for the third consecutive month (on an annual basis). On a monthly basis, however, expenses fell 2.1% from April, suffering the first decline in four months.