Australian Economy

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released trade data for the month of January, with Australia recording a seasonally-adjusted trade surplus of $1,433 million.

A decent theory for the blowout number in retail sales from the SMH blog: Retail spending may have jumped sharply in January, but economists warn it is too early to say if the good times are back for retailers.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released retail sales figures for the month of January, which registered a 1.2% seasonally-adjusted increase in sales over the month, which met economist’s expectations.

By Leith van Onselen Of all the expenditure cuts by the Federal Government, cutting employment in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has to be among the most reckless.

Education is Australia’s only real non-mining export industry of the future (as a subset of tourism), but that hasn’t helped it survive Budget rigors in the past few years and the cost is showing.

By Leith van Onselen Following on from yesterday’s national accounts release by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), I have once again benchmarked Australia’s economic recovery since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) against the recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s.

The RBA’s John Edwards reckons: “There’s a debate about whether the place is picking up or tipping into a very serious downturn, and this certainly argues against the serious downturn point of view,” he said.

These people have no shame.

From Bloxo today comes another happy take: Today’s GDP numbers were positive. They showed that growth has picked up and that Australia’s great rebalancing act is underway. GDP rose by +0.8% in Q4 to be +2.8% higher y-o-y (market had +2.5%).

This seems to me to be a solid take from Stephen Walters at JP Morgan on today’s GDP figures: Australia’s economy expanded 0.8%q/q last quarter, slightly firmer than expectations, and a welcome improvement on the previous quarter’s sluggish gain of 0.6%.

By Leith van Onselen As summarised by Houses & Holes earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released the national accounts for the December quarter, which registered a 0.8% increase in real GDP over the quarter and a 2.8% rise over the year.

Via the SMH blog: UBS interest rate strategist Matthew Johnson: GDP was a bit better than what the RBA and the market were expecting but not really good enough to bring rate hikes into focus.

Here come the bulls: There seems to be at least a little irony in there.

The AIG Performance of Services (PSI) is out this morning and will give the cyclically-focused more to crow about: The latest seasonally adjusted Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Services Index (Australian PSI®) jumped by 5.8 points to 55.2 points in February.

It appears MB has finally beaten some sense into Ross Gittins: When people hear news reports about redundancies at this factory and that, many conclude we must be heading for recession.

By Leith van Onselen Roy Morgan Research (RMR) last night released its unemployment estimate for the month of February, which registered a large jump in the unemployment rate to 12.3% from 11.3% in January (see next chart).

From the AFR: The federal government rejected ­Qantas Airways’ bid for direct assistance based on advice from two investment banks, the federal Treasury, the Department of Infrastructure and accounting firm PwC, sources said.

From Callam Pickering at locked-BS: The continued growth in building approvals will be a welcome sight for the Reserve Bank of Australia, which is relying on the housing sector to fill in some of the hole left by the impending decline in mining investment.

Also from the RBA: Preliminary estimates for February indicate that the index declined by 1.3 per cent (on a monthly average basis) in SDR terms, after declining by 1.6 per cent in January (revised).

From Sky News: The jobless rate could soar to 6.5 per cent this year, and prompt another interest rate cut by the central bank, as the mining investment boom unwinds.

The Kouk is back today with another back flip.

Forgive the spelling, the original does not respond well to spam filters for some reason!

From Westpac today: Q4 net exports: +0.6ppts Net exports made a sizeable contribution to growth in Q4 of 0.65ppts (rounding down to 0.6ppts). This outcome was a fraction below expectations (market median 0.7ppt, Westpac 0.8ppts.) Exports advanced in Q4 by +2.4%qtr, +6.5%yr, a positive result underpinned by the resources sector.

The ANZ-Roy Morgan weekly consumer confidence survey has fallen another 0.8 points to 109.6 points.