A customer places a 10,000 yen Japanese banknote on the checkout counter while making a purchase at Akidai YK supermarket in Tokyo, Japan, Monday, June 27, 2022.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Most Asia-Pacific markets fell on Friday, with investors weighing November salaries and household spending outside Japan.
Real household spending in Japan fell 0.4% year-on-year in November, a smaller decline compared with the 0.6% decline expected by economists polled by Reuters. The decline was also smaller than the 1.3% decline seen in October.
The average real income per household was 514,409 yen ($3,252.98) in November, up 0.7% from a year earlier.
The People's Bank of China announced that it will temporarily suspend its purchases of Treasury bonds, Reuters reported. This is due to a shortage in the supply of bonds, with the People's Bank of China adding that it will resume bond purchases depending on supply and demand in the government bond market.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.44% after the announcement, while mainland China's CSI 300 was marginally below the flat line.
Japan Nikki 225 The Topix fell 0.71%, while the broad-based Topix saw a smaller loss of 0.54%.
South Korea Cosby Reversing earlier gains, falling 0.41%, small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.93%.
Australia Standard & Poor's/ASX 200 It also fell by 0.55%, after being in positive territory earlier in the session.
Overnight in the US, markets were closed on Thursday due to the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, but traders will evaluate Friday's US labor data, along with non-farm payrolls numbers for December.
Economists expect the Bureau of Labor Statistics to report Friday morning an increase of 155,000 nonfarm payrolls, down from the surprise gain of 227,000 jobs in November but in line with the four-month average. The unemployment rate is expected to stabilize at 4.2%.
— CNBC's Jeff Cox contributed to this report.
