The Japanese yen weakened in Asian trading on Wednesday as more disappointing data weighed on the world’s third-largest economy and its prospects heading into 2023. Tokyo has come under a lot of pressure as of late, with a broad array of metrics pointing to substantial weakness in Japan. Will next year result in a recession?

According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry (METI), industrial production tumbled 0.1% month-over-month in November. While this represented the third consecutive monthly decline, it was a notable improvement from the -3.2% in October. The headline was also better than the market estimate of -0.3%.

Data showed that the decline in industrial output was led by general-purpose machinery (-11.3%), general-purpose and business-oriented machinery (-7.9%), capital goods (-6.8%), production machinery (-5.7%), investment goods (-5.5%), and capital goods ex transport equipment (-5%).

On a year-over-year basis, industrial output fell 1.3%.

Construction orders plummeted 9.7% year-over-year last month, down from the 7.9% gain in October. This was the first drop since March, when construction orders cratered more than 21%.

Housing starts also slipped 1.4% year-over-year in November, below the market forecast of 1.5%.

Retail sales tumbled 1.1% in November, while the unemployment rate dipped to 2.5%. Last week, it was reported that the annual inflation rate climbed to a 41-year high of 3.8% in November.

All of these factors have resulted in a growing chorus of economists penciling in a recession in 2023.

“We think the Japanese economy will enter a recession sometime next year,” said Marcel Thieliant, senior Japan economist at Capital Economics, in an interview with CNBC, adding that an economic downturn would “mostly be driven by a drop in exports and also by becoming more cautious, which is typically what you see when exports start to fall.”

The Japanese yen has been one of the worst-performing advanced currencies this year, plummeting more than 16% against its US counterpart.

The USD/JPY rose 0.41% to 134.05, from an opening of 133.50, at 16:13 GMT on Tuesday. The GBP/JPY jumped 0.39% to 161.21, from an opening of 160.59.