Shrinking domestic market, worker shortage are biggest headaches for Japanese firms: poll

Tokyo

JAPANESE firms say shrinking domestic demand is their biggest worry over the next three years while labour shortages are a close second, a Reuters poll found, highlighting the difficulties of coping with a dwindling and rapidly ageing population.

Japan's demographic challenges have for decades hindered efforts by policymakers to engineer a sustained economic recovery as the country's greying consumers, lacking confidence in the future, tend to scrimp and save rather than spend.