East Asia Econ

Korea – retail sales up, overall output still rangebound

There's been enough data on Korea already this week, so just briefly on today's end-of-month July data. There was a nice bounce in retail sales, reflecting the impact of fiscal policy. But IP was flat, and construction ticked down, so all economy output remains range-bound.

Paul Cavey

Aug 29, 2025 • 1 min read

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East Asia Today

It's been a big week for data in Korea, and there was more today, with the end-month activity numbers. Retail sales bounced, but other sectors remained subdued. Data for Japan today showed retail sales being weak, but consumer confidence has improved, and UE has fallen to a new post-covid low.

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Japan – UE falls to post-covid low

The fall in the UE rate in July to 2.3% isn't substantively important. The mechanics behind it were more noteworthy, in particular a ticking down in the part rate. Other data today show a softening of inflation in Tokyo in August, and nationwide retail sales falling to the lowest level in 2 years.

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East Asia Today

Today's big event was Korea's MPC, and the separate release of the local version of JOLTS data. In Japan, July unit sales at Toyota and nationwide exports in the first 10 days of August were stable. Taiwan's monitoring index in July was also unchanged, suggesting GDP growth has slowed, but not much.