Spending by Japan's wage-earning households fell an inflation-adjusted 2.3 percent in November from a year earlier to an average 312,376 yen per household, the Management and Coordination Agency said Tuesday.

This marked a second straight month of decline.

The margin of decline was larger than October's 0.1 percent fall, due mainly to a 16.7 percent plunge in clothing expenditures -- the largest such slump since February 1998 -- and a 7.7 percent slide in spending on housing, the agency said.