The long, slow death of the Australian consumer

Wednesday 3 June 2020

Yesterday’s national accounts data for the March quarter, which preceded the COVID-19 shutdown, confirmed that the Australian consumer is dead.

As shown in the next chart, real household consumption fell by 0.24% in the year to March 2020, which was the biggest fall since 1961:

In per capita terms, household consumption fell by 1.7%, which was the biggest fall since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC):

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About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.