Westpac with the note.
The Westpac Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Index declined 1.3% to 81 in January from 82.1 in December. For consumers, the new year looks to have picked up where the old one left off: cost of living and high interest rates continuing to dominate and sentiment bumping around deeply pessimistic levels.
The latest January read is in the bottom 7% of all observations since the survey was first run in the mid-1970s. More pessimistic starts to the year have only been seen during the deep recession of the early 1990s.
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