Fresh from the dreadful building approvals numbers, the ABS has served up lousy retail sales:
That’s 0.2% growth for October and shows a clearly fading pulse from the mid year unleashing of pent up demand triggered by the plateauing of rates.
I mooted last month that with the savings rate having plateaued, retail sales may be able to grow at the rate of wages henceforth. There is no evidence of that here and the internals look worse with only clothing (up from 0.1% to 1.2%) and food (up from 0.2 to 0.5) increasing growth on the month. Household goods got smacked from 1% in September down to 0.2% in October. Eating out fell from 0.9% to 0.2% and department stores just look like they’re going out of business. That’s a clear drawing back from discretionary spending. This is pre the November rate cut, so perhaps that will revitalise the pulse:
The long term trend shows you the level of new interest we’re dealing with. It would not take too much to knock it off completely:
More whinging needed, Gerry. Rate cut fodder, this.
