NAB survey goes to the hawks

The NAB April Business Survey is out and it’s got something for everyone. For the rate doves, the lead Business Conditions Index softened:

And the internals dropped pretty substantially:

However, two other key indexes for the RBA are strongly inflationary. First and foremost, labour:

And employment:

In sum, I would say that despite the weakness, this survey has eaten away at one of the RBA’s primary reasons for not hiking: that labour constraints have not been broad based. I’ll give this one to the hawks by a nose. Full survey available below.

APRIL NAB SURVEY

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.