Jim Chalmers puts lipstick on economic pig

Wednesday’s national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that Australia’s per capita GDP declined by 0.2% in Q1 2025 and by 0.4% year-on-year.

This represented the ninth decline in eleven quarters, with per capita GDP down a total of 1.7% over that period.

The overall GDP growth of 0.2% also badly undershot the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) forecast of 0.45% growth and means that a growth rate of 0.7% will be required in Q2 2025 to meet the RBA’s first-half forecast – a rate not seen since Q2 2022:

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

Share

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.