The Q4 2024 national accounts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggested that households remained in recession.
Real per capita household consumption declined for a record eighth consecutive quarter.
This followed a record 8% decline in real per capita household disposable income.
On Thursday, CBA released its Household Spending Insights (HSI) for February, which is based on the spending of CBA customers.
The HSI recorded a fall in spending of 0.2% in February, which followed January’s 0.1% decline.
In per capita terms, the HSI rose by just 2.1% in the year to February, which was below the 2.4% rise in CPI inflation in the year to Q4 2024.
Spending was lower for renters than for owner-occupiers.
The following chart from Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro plots CBA’s HSI against household consumption in the ABS national accounts.
While CBA’s HSI is obviously choppy, it does suggest that consumption spending has failed to rebound and households remain in recession.
