While Australia has not experienced an official recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth – for 28 years. This has not stopped Australians from searching the term “recession”.
As shown in the next chart from Fidelity, Google searches for “recession” is running at the highest level since the Global Financial Crisis more than a decade ago:
This makes sense given Australian households are experiencing a deep recession in real per capita household disposable income (HDI), which has fallen by 0.5% over the past seven years:
Real per capita GDP growth has also cratered, recording growth of 0%, -0.1%, 0% and 0% over the past four quarters, and trending down sharply:
Australian per capita GDP growth has also lagged behind all major economies and regions this decade:
Therefore, while the Australian economy has avoided a technical recession – by inflating headline GDP growth via mass immigration – households are going backwards.
Australia may not be in technical recession, but it feels like one.
