Australia officially commenced a “per capita recession” in the June quarter after two consecutive -0.3% prints in per capita real GDP:
The consecutive falls in GDP were caused by a 0.2% decline per capita household consumption over the year to June:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has updated its global growth forecasts, with the world expected to grow by 3% this year and 2.9% in 2024.
The IMF tips that Australia’s real GDP growth will slow even faster, from just 1.8% this year to 1.2% in 2024:
Source: IMF
Apart from the Covid pandemic, this would be the slowest two years of aggregate growth since the early 1990s recession.
The May federal budget also projected that Australia’s population would grow by 1.9% in 2023 and 1.6% in 2024:
Source: 2023 federal budget
However, the June quarter national accounts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimated that Australia’s population grew by 2.4% in 2022-23, completely obliterating the federal budget’s forecasts:
Source: Cameron Kusher (PropTrack)
Therefore, according to the IMF’s GDP forecasts, Australia will experience a torrid two-year per capita recession, with 2024 expected to be considerably worse than 2023.
