NAB survey shows signs of life

Tuesday 14 February 2017

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. NAB itself admits that the survey is overly weighted against mining. More important is the solid lift in the employment index, capacity utilisation and labour costs. If those three keep improving then we’ll be getting somewhere.

About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.