Australian Economy

The April NAB Business Survey is out and shows a mixed result  with confidence down sharply but some stabilisation in conditions: Business confidence was pared back in the month to its lowest post-election level, which is also below its long-run average.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released visitor arrivals and departures data for the month of February, which registered a rebound in net long-term and permanent migration into Australia.

ANZ job ads are out and firmed again in March by 1.4 per cent.

By Leith van Onselen The beer drinking Aussie yobbo is fast becoming an extinct species, with new analysis from CommSec showing alcohol consumption in Australia hitting a 17-year low, with beer consumption at the lowest level for 67 years: Alcohol consumption has hit 17-year lows.

By Leith van Onselen If you want to see another example of poor infrastructure investment, check out this Channel 10 news clip on Gold Coast light rail: a $500 million project funded partly through rate and taxpayers, which involves 13 kilometres of track from Gold Coast University Hospital at Southport down the coast to Broadbeach.

More good work today from Chris Joye at the AFR: Australian household debt has hit a record 177 per cent of annual disposable income while housing valuations are “flashing red”, according to Barclay’s chief economist, Kieran Davies.

Institutional stability is one of those vague terms that is cited as a crucial support when one assesses the relative merits and risk of any given market.

Terry McCrann is not generally taken by dystopian visions but today he’s had one and it will be familiar to MB readers: The end of domestic petroleum refining, car manufacturing, most other consumer goods manufacturing, food processing, bauxite refining, aluminium smelting — what’s left of the steel industry?

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released trade data for the month of February, with Australia recording a seasonally-adjusted trade surplus of $1,200 million.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released retail sales figures for the month of February, which registered a 0.2% seasonally-adjusted increase in sales over the month, slightly below economist’s expectations of a 0.3% rise.

For the third day in a row we’ve got a marginal indicator on the slide. Following the PMI and the NAB online sales index, the PSI has als0 slumped: The latest seasonally adjusted Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Services Index (Australian PSI®) dropped by 6.2 points to 48.9 points in March.

By Leith van Onselen The Victorian manufacturing industry can’t take a trick at the moment.