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In January 2024, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported a youth unemployment rate of 14.9 per cent, highlighting a structural misalignment between an oversupply of tertiary graduates and a limited services sector unable to accommodate them. Growing youth unemployment is also exacerbated by cultural preferences for tertiary education, leading to a perception of vocational work as insecure and decreasing the prestige of vocational roles. The services industry has been unable to absorb the surge in tertiary-educated individuals partly due to regulatory tightening and the decimation of small- and medium-sized enterprises during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
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In March 2024, the Bank of Japan shifted its monetary policy by raising interest rates from negative 0.1 per cent to 0–0.1 per cent and halting its quantitative and qualitative easing (QQE) measures, marking the first policy change towards tightening credit in seventeen years. While the Bank of Japan's previous measures under QQE were unable to stimulate demand and inflation, adjustments in interest rates, despite being minimal, have the potential to impact firms' and households' behaviour. Future policy adjustments will be dependent on the outlook of future inflation.