Roy Morgan consumer confidence also weak

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Roy Morgan’s weekly consumer confidence number is out and strongly backs up the Westpac/Melbourne Institute survey releases earlier today. Here are the two indexes:

The different time periods make it difficult to see but both surveys show the same pattern of a bounce from July last year on the expectation of a rate cut and the subsequent draining of that exuberance. However, the internals of the surveys differ. Bill Evans made a lot of the fall in the prospects for family finances over the next year. Yet Roy Morgan show a recent small rise in perceptions of personal financial prospects. Not a huge deal but worth noting:

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Consumer Confidence is at 110.0pts (up 1.3pts in a week), according to the Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating conducted last weekend (April 7/8, 2012).

Despite the increase in the last week Consumer Confidence has fallen 5.6pts since March 10/11, 2012 and is now 10.9 points lower than a year ago, April 9/10, 2011 (120.9).

The small rise in Consumer Confidence has been primarily driven by a rise in confidence about Australians personal financial situations over the next year.Australians are more confident about their personal finances over the next 12 months with 38% (up 1%) saying they expect their family to be ‘better off’ financially while 19% (down 3%) expect to be ‘worse off’.

Australians are slightly more confident about Australia’s economy over the long-term with 33% (up 1%) of Australians expecting Australia to have ‘good times’ economically over the next five years compared to 23% (down 1%) that expect ‘bad times’.

Australians are slightly less confident about Australia’s economy over the next twelve months with 28% (down 1%) of Australians expecting ‘good times’ economically over the next twelve months (the lowest since November 26/27, 2011) compared to 35% (down 1%) of Australians that expect Australia to have ‘bad times’.

Now 28% (unchanged) of Australians say their family is ‘better off’ financially compared to a year ago while 34% (unchanged) say their family is ‘worse off’ financially.

A slightly decreasing majority of Australians 53% (down 1%) say now is a ‘good time to buy’ major household items (the lowest since October 8/9, 2011) and 19% of Australians (down 1%) say now is a ‘bad time to buy’ major household items.

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.