Roy Morgan consumer confidence also weak

By in Australian Economy

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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:

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.

David Llewellyn-Smith
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