Australian Economy

By Leith van Onselen Yesterday, a group of labour academics released a book, entitled The Wages Crisis in Australia, which bemoans Australia’s anaemic wages growth and offers policy prescriptions.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released data on capital expenditures (capex) for the September quarter, which registered a 0.5% seasonally adjusted decline in capex volumes over the quarter and a 0.6% decrease over the year (see below table).

The ABS is out with September QTR private capex and the news is pretty good: TOTAL CAPITAL EXPENDITURE Estimate 4 for total capital expenditure for 2018-19 is $114,099m. This is 4.4% higher than Estimate 4 for 2017-18. The main contributor to the increase is Other Selected Industries (6.8%).

By Leith van Onselen A group of labour academics have written a book, entitled The Wages Crisis in Australia, which bemoans Australia’s anaemic wages growth and offer some policy prescriptions.

Gotti says we’re getting smashed: This week’s dramatic announcement that the nation had actually achieved a budget surplus was based on high mineral revenues and a housing boom.

By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Suburban Alliance: In amongst changing Prime Ministers (again) or our ongoing obsession with all things Trump, there mustn’t have been much room left in the media this year for analysis of interesting jobs forecasts and other economic news.

Via Damien Boey of Credit Suisse today: In our recent article “Crying wolf against the little engine that could”, dated 15 November 2018, we suggested that the pulse of activity growth has faded badly towards the back end of the year.

You can see where the coming Shorten Government is going to go today in Victoria, via the ABC: Victoria’s re-elected Premier Daniel Andrews has unveiled his new front bench, with half of ministry positions going to women.

By Leith van Onselen Sadly, Fairfax’s Ross Gitins has turned into a shill for the ‘growth lobby’, missing the point entirely on why Australians are unhappy despite 27 years of so-called continuous “economic sunshine”.

Yesterday in response to Gerard Minack’s latest I noted that my base case was not for recession in 2019 but steep slowing to 2% GDP growth or below in H2: The principle reason for this is still high public spending, decent net exports and population growth of 1.6%.

By Leith van Onselen Too often, commentators on the population debate understate the role played by immigration in driving Australia’s population growth. These commentators usually claim that net overseas migration (NOM) accounts for around 60% of Australia’s population increase, whereas “natural increase” (births minus deaths) accounts for around 40%.

Weeo, weeo, weeo.

By Leith van Onselen UBS has forecast that Australian retailers’ discretionary sales will grow by just 1.2% year-on-year during the Christmas 2018 period, compared with around 3% in the last three years.

Via BKW: The stock also up with the wider market but, again, I wouldn’t buy it.

Hooocoodanode: The stock is actually up a little at the open on with the wider market but I wouldn’t buy that.

Earlier this morning I gave an interview with 2GB’s Michael McLaren talking about Sydney’s break-neck population growth and the latest attempt by the so-called “Good Growth Alliance” – the cabal of property rent-seekers – seeking to shut down discussion about lowering immigration to more sensible levels.

Via Gerard Minack: There are risks aplenty in Australia, centred on expensive houses, high leverage and low saving.