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Japan March real wages mark full year of decline on inflation
Japan's real wages fell in March for a twelfth month, government data showed on Tuesday, as consumer inflation outpaced nominal pay growth for a full year despite policymakers' pleas for higher employee compensation. Large firms concluded three-decade-high wage hikes at their March labour talks, and whether the trend spreads to smaller businesses is key to the outlook for the Bank of Japan's monetary policy normalisation under the new governor Kazuo Ueda. Inflation-adjusted real wages, a barometer of households' purchasing power, decreased by 2.9% in March from a year earlier, following the same pace of decline in ... (full story)