About 94% of people in Japan feel that prices have increased from a year ago, the highest since 2008, according to a Bank of Japan survey conducted in December.

In the survey released Wednesday, 52.7% of respondents said they felt prices have gone up by a large margin and 41.6% said they felt they have gone up slightly from a year ago, totaling 94.3%. That compares with 91.8% in the previous survey, conducted in September, and 77.4% from December 2021.

The results also showed that 53% of the respondents are experiencing less comfortable financial circumstances than a year before, up from 40% in the December 2021 survey, with 88.4% of respondents attributing this to price hikes.

Some 85% believed the price hike trend will continue a year from now.

The nationwide survey was conducted from Nov. 4 to Dec. 1, with 2,108 respondents age 20 and up.

Price hikes have been making headlines over the last year, with the consumer price index excluding fresh food, released earlier this week, showing a 4% year-on-year rise in Tokyo in December, a leading indicator of nationwide trends.

But real wages have been declining, prompting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to call on businesses to raise salaries ahead of the annual spring wage negotiations between businesses and labor unions.