futures market. growth for growth ’ s sake is not acceptable. can market forces sort this out? this is a question that the futures industry must ask itself, and i hope that the industry takes it seriously. bis central bankers ’ speeches in this regard, the fact that many commodity futures in japan are not flourishing might lead us to conclude that any market that fails to attract a sufficient amount of non - speculative activity will languish. the market might take care of the balance between speculative and non - speculative activities. in the case of financial futures, banks have legitimate hedging needs, and such activity will support a certain level of speculation in the market. meanwhile, the depressed levels of activity in financial futures for short - term instruments, in today ’ s ultra - low - interest - rate environment, might be consistent with the self - correcting forces of the markets. concluding remarks today, i have reflected on how far the industry, especially in japan, has progressed in meeting the challenges arising from the great financial crisis. i have also pointed out that the industry still needs to redefine its role in the post - crisis environment. in order to end my remarks on a positive note, i would like to quickly outline two opportunities for the industry. one is that there are still many risks for which the introduction of a traded market could be beneficial to the economy. an example is longevity risks. as i have stressed on numerous occasions, japan is facing acute challenges in terms of demography, which in turn weaken potential growth. a well - designed product that could deal with longevity risks could facilitate japan meeting those challenges. another opportunity is in terms of leveraging the advantages of the futures market structure. one feature that comes to my mind is the transparency of prices. there may be many areas in which prices determined on futures exchanges could become benchmarks for related economic activity. the recent attention over the setting of libor seems to confirm such a view. such positive contributions should confirm that the futures industry will continue to perform useful and indispensable functions within the society. we are now in a period of great changes. last night, we heard the remarks of the minister of state for financial services, mr. matsushita. he told us that japan had implemented and was planning to introduce many reforms that would enhance the competitiveness of and strengthen the confidence in the japanese financial markets. considering that a period of change is a period of opportunities, i believe that the industry could potentially accelerate its growth by

prices have led to a lower volume of purchases, private consumption in real terms has continued to increase steadily, supported by so - called pent - up demand after the reclassification of covid - 19 under the infectious disease control law, and also by improvement in consumer sentiment reflecting the results of this year's annual spring labor - management wage negotiations ( chart 6 ). let me look at the developments of private consumption separately for goods and services. as for goods, consumption of durable goods has begun to pick up on the back of growth in new car sales owing to the waning of supply - side constraints for semiconductors used in automobiles. consumption of nondurable goods has been relatively weak due to the effects of high prices of beverages, food, and clothes. services consumption has increased moderately, with the impact of covid - 19 waning and fueled by pent - up demand. for example, even with the ongoing price rises, the dining - out industry has seen an increase in customer footfall across a wide range of restaurants, including izakaya ( japanese - style bars ), which had been slow to recover. domestic travel has been firm, even as the effects of the government's domestic travel discount program have waned gradually, because long - distance travel, which was at a low level during the pandemic, has been recovering. overseas travel has remained at a low level but has continued to increase moderately. the employment and income situation has improved moderately. the number of employed persons has seen moderate growth. the growth in regular employees is led by the medical, healthcare, and welfare services industry and by the information and communications industry, both of which have faced a severe labor shortage, while that in non - regular employees is led by industries such as face - to - face services. nominal wages per employee have also increased moderately ( chart 7 ). scheduled cash earnings have also been on the rise. this is because the wages of full - time employees have started to gradually reflect the results of this year's annual spring labor - management wage negotiations, which ended up with the highest wage growth rate since 1993, and also because hourly wages for part - time employees have been rising as labor market conditions have tightened. special cash earnings have increased as well, reflecting larger bonuses on the back of improvement in corporate earnings. as a result, total employee income, which is the product of the number of employees and nominal wages per employee, is also on the rise. until recently, there