The AiG Performance of Construction Index (PCI) is out for April and, such as it is, is disastrous for the RBA and Treasury project of boosting housing construction to replace mining investment.
I don’t entirely trust the AiG PMI series. But it hard to ignore falls like this:
All of this year’s recovery is gone. Moreover, the internals are worse for the rebalancing project.
Activity in houses tanked:
New orders persisted in a slowly rising trend:
But new orders for houses tanked:
Meanwhile, the most important dimension of rebalancing, jobs, collapsed to its lowest level in the cycle:
The full lineup is sobering:
What can I say? All three AiG PMIs tanked in April. They are second order indicators and the consumer is spending OK in stores but it pretty clearly isn’t translating into business investment.
Sorry RBA and Treasury, you’ve have stuffed it up.