“Ute recession” underlines construction bust

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Via News:

If you use ute sales as a marker of small business investment in Australia, you get the impression small business is terrified. Sales of light commercial vehicles collapsed in October 2019, down 11 per cent compared with October 2018.

At the start of the 2019, sales were much the same as last year. Some months a bit higher, some a bit lower. Around the middle of this year something changed. Sales of light commercial vehicles – which is mostly utes but includes vans and small buses – began to get worse and worse. In October, the fall was a whopping 11 per cent.

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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.