Accompanying good consumer confidence numbers today, there is also a good result for unemployment expectations. From Westpac:
The unemployment expectations index fell 6.6% in Aug, the largest monthly improvement (remembering that a fall in the index suggests consumers are not expecting unemployment to rise as much as they did a month earlier) since the 6.9%fall in Nov 2012.
Through the year to Aug, the index is now down 8.2% compared to a –0.7%yr print in Jul and 3.2%yr print in Jun. Following two declines and one flat print, over the last three months the trend index fell 0.3% in Aug but is 20% higher than its long run average.
Despite the improvement, the index is still pointing to a weak near-term outlook for full-time employment and total hours worked.
We should note an interesting comparison to the Mar 1996 election; back then the index fell 19.2%, much greater than this month’s drop.
But be aware that the index then jumped 27.1% in Apr 1996. The improvement in the index was very short lived.
Unexpectations_bulletin_pack_September2013.pdf by Lauren Frazier