Australian Economy

A few more charts on the labour market today from Morgan Stanley: There’s a modest improvement in the pipeline for the next six months.

Via the ABC: East-coast Australia’s domestic gas shortage is crippling some rural businesses, and has prompted one owner to accuse the nation’s politicians of treason.

By Leith van Onselen Another week and more reports have emerged on how Australia’s uncoordinated mass immigration program is destroying living standards in Australia’s biggest cities.

By Leith van Onselen Yesterday’s ABS labour force release for January revealed a much-needed improvement in labour market conditions for those aged 15 to 24 years old, albeit from highly depressed levels.

By Leith van Onselen As summarised earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released its labour force report for January, which registered a 13,500 increase in total employment and a decrease in the headline unemployment rate to 5.7%.

From Morgan Stanley: Last October we launched the proprietary Morgan Stanley Housing Australia indicator, which is calibrated to lead the building approvals and dwelling price growth cycle by 3-4 quarters (see Australia Macro+: Australian Housing: Stressing the Foundations, 19 Oct 2016).

The ABS has released January Labour Force and the news is luke warm as part time still dominates: SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE) Employment increased 13,500 to 11,998,200.

From Westpac: The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment rose 2.3% in February, from 97.4 in January to 99.6.

From The Australian: The nation’s energy market operator is under pressure to fix its ­operations after revealing the key failures that triggered blackouts for 90,000 customers last week, during a heatwave that has escalated a political dispute over ­energy security.

From the always bullish CommSec: New vehicle sales remain healthy and it is not hard to see why people are updating their rides.

From Westpac: Worth noting this month: The 3% jump in the month is well within normal monthly volatility and the trend is broadly flat.

Cross-posted from Gareth Aird, senior economist at the Commonwealth Bank.

By Leith van Onselen A delegation of South Australia’s business leaders has cornered senator Nick Xenophon and demanded that he support the Turnbull Government’s company tax cut policy, while also pushing to ramp-up skilled immigration into the state.

From Westpac: • The NAB business survey reported that business conditions jumped sharply in January, increasing to the highest level since October 2007.

By Leith van Onselen The Australia Institute (TAI) has released another report, entitled Oligopoly money How a company tax cut would be wasted on big business, which argues that the Turnbull Government’s planned company tax cut would be unlikely to encourage the largest companies in Australia to increase investment.

From Westpac: The January business surveys have started 2017 on a very positive note for the labour market with Westpac’s Jobs Index jumping to 52.3, the highest level in this index since GFC (last reading this high was May 2008).

From the Australian Industry Group: An Ai Group member running a national company with an international parent showed me his electricity bill last week.

The NAB business survey for January is out and shows some improvement from recent lackluster results: Headline numbers were the bets since 2007 which is pretty silly: I’d take that with a grain of salt.

By Leith van Onselen The fallout from the Dominos Pizza visa scandal continues, with The New Daily today profiling Tosif Varsi, a 31 year-old migrant worker from India, who was hired as the store manager of a Domino’s Pizza franchise on a sponsored permanent residency visa in 2016.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday released its overseas short-term arrivals and departures figures for December, which continued to show a trend rise in the number of inbound tourists, with Chinese arrivals continuing to boom.

Cross posted from The Conversation Simon Driver Professor of Astrophysics, University of Western Australia   Any nation that hopes to have a space program needs to be able to keep an eye on its orbiting assets at all times.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released visitor arrivals and departures data for the month of December, which registered a small decrease in annual immigration.