Australian Economy

Via LMIP: Unemployment to keep on rising and wages to keep on falling.

Via The Australian: As much as $1.35bn in wages are underpaid each year according to new estimates that underline the risk to business from moves to criminalise so-called wage theft and amplify calls for an overhaul of the awards system to reduce complexity.

Via Bill Evans at Westpac: • The six month annualised growth rate in the Westpac– Melbourne Institute Leading Index, which indicates the likely pace of economic activity relative to trend three to nine months into the future, lifted from –1.01% in September to –0.91% in October.

Via the AFR: Scott Morrison has all but slammed the door on fast-tracked tax cuts or other ”panicked reactions” in next month’s mid-year budget update, saying the government has already injected $9.5 billion of near-term stimulus into the economy since the May election.

From Roy Morgan Research: Surveyed in October, Australians as a whole expect prices to increase by 4.1% annually over the next two years. This is up very slightly (0.1%) on how they were feeling in September, but is down to a greater degree (0.4%) on their expectations a year earlier.

Australia’s water crisis is spreading north from New South Wales into South East Queensland (SEQ): Queensland’s combined dam level capacity had fallen to 60 per cent in the south-east of the state for the first time in 11 years, Seqwater says.

There’s no stopping it: Confidence was down again last week, falling 1.1%.

Via the ABC: Insolvency practitioners are offering a stark warning to Australian business: get your affairs in order, bad times are ahead.

The collapse in Australia’s household incomes has been well documented on this site, including: 1.

S&P Global Ratings has warned again on Australia’s record high household debt: Household debt as a percentage of net household disposable income in Australia is high compared with many other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (chart 8).

The water crisis facing NSW has made headlines over at CNN: …the city of Sydney — home to more than 5 million people — faces a warning that dams could run dry by 2022… Dams in greater Sydney are currently at 46.6% capacity.

This is the right idea but for the wrong folks, at The Australian: One of the most important statistics calculated by Foreseechange is its “willingness to spend” data.

Via News: If you use ute sales as a marker of small business investment in Australia, you get the impression small business is terrified.

Recessionberg is looking for tax cuts.

Yesterday’s ABS labour force release for October revealed a sharp deterioration in Australia’s youth labour market – i.e.

As summarised earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released its labour force report for October, which registered a 19,000 decrease in total employment and an increase in the headline unemployment rate (from 5.2% to 5.3%).