The latest ME Bank six monthly survey of financial comfort, released this week, revealed that cost of living pressures remain by far the biggest concern amongst Australian households, with 40% claiming they are living paycheck to paycheck:
31% of households that indicated that their financial situation had worsened over the past year, there was a marked increase in the number citing the cost of living as the reason – up by 7 points to 43% during the six months to June 2019, and much higher than the next most cited reasons: change in job arrangements/job security (13%), change in income (12%) and no/low wage growth (11%). See Figure 18…
The ‘cost of necessities’ (e.g. fuel, utilities and groceries) continued to be the ‘biggest worry’ of households, although the proportion nominating this as their biggest worry fell by two points to 44% during the six months to June 2019…
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Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
