The Bank of Korea’s (BOK) July trade-price data Friday showed South Korea’s terms of trade improving 24.7% from a year earlier, confirming that the semiconductor boom is creating an income surge far larger than its employment gains.

This leaves policymakers managing an economy in which national purchasing power is rising faster than many workers can feel.

The terms of trade measure how much South Korea can buy from abroad with the money it earns from exports. The improvement has become unusually large because memory chip prices are rising much faster than prices for the goods the country imports.

The BOK