After this month’s stronger-than-expected June quarter national accounts release, which saw the economy grow by 0.6% over the quarter (faster than consensus and the RBA’s forecasts), Westpac’s leading index, which indicates the likely pace of economic activity relative to trend three to nine months into the future, has stalled. The six-month annualised growth rate in
Cotality has released alarming data showing that Australia’s rental market is tightening fast. The following chart from Cotality shows that the total number of rental listings has fallen back to a historic low across the combined capital cities, tracking at about half the level of the early pandemic peak: The following chart from Cotality shows
On Monday, Shadow Home Affairs Minister Andrew Hastie threatened to quit the opposition front bench unless Coalition leader Sussan Ley abandons the party’s commitment to a net zero emissions target. For more than two decades, the Coalition has been engaging in internal battles over the issue of climate change action. Back in 2003, several prominent
As the debate over migration continues both on social media and in the halls of power, myths surrounding its impact on housing continue to propagate. This is despite the fact that the issue can often be easily disproven with a quick review of the data and a brief reading of commentary from one of the
The number of international enrolments in Australia hit a record high of 839,200 in the year to June 2025. This was up around 13,400 (1.6%) from the 825,800 enrolments in 2024, around 130,440 (18%) higher than the same time in 2019 before the pandemic, and more than triple the 266,100 enrolments 20 years earlier in
There are days when an investors’ patience is tested. Yesterday was one for iron ore. Chinese data was bad. Not so bad as to expect imminent super stimmies but bad enough that commodity prices should have taken a hit given the weakness was most notable in commodity-intensive sectors. Goldman gives us a brief wrap Bottom
With the release of the latest national accounts earlier this month, it was revealed that household consumption spending had picked up in the June quarter, rising by 0.9% in real terms. While 0.4 percentage points worth of that rise was driven by the growth in the working-age population, in overall terms it marked the equal
From the Market Ear: Room to run SPX continues to trade inside the short-term trend channel that has been in place since late May. RSI is getting rather overbought, but overbought levels tend to stay overbought for longer than most think possible. Note the upper part of the channel is still higher. The chase is
On Thursday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will release the official labour force release for August. Ahead of that release, Roy Morgan released its shadow labour force survey for August, which recorded a sharp 0.8% increase in unemployment to 11.1%, up 2.0% year-on-year: Roy Morgan effectively counts someone as unemployed if they want a
In the world of Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Australia’s economy is strong, wages are booming, and living standards are rebounding fast: “The Coalition’s deliberate policy of wage suppression saw wages stagnate for the best part of a decade and living standards fall sharply, but we’re turning that around”. “We’ve managed to get inflation down and