Australian Economy

The Aussie flash PMI is pancaked. Flash Australia PMI Composite Output Index(1): 50.3 (Dec:50.2). 5-month high. Flash Australia Services PMI Business Activity Index(2):50.4 (Dec: 50.8). 6-month low. Flash Australia Manufacturing Output Index(3): 50.0 (Dec:45.8). 26-month high. Flash Australia Manufacturing PMI(4): 49.8 (Dec: 47.8).

The steel and iron ore jaws are looking pretty attractive for a May seasonal short.

One of the Trump Administration’s first acts upon taking the US Presidential Office was to declare a “national energy emergency”.

Westpac with the note.

CBA with the bad news.

With an official unemployment rate of only 4.0%, you would be forgiven for thinking that Australia’s labour market is booming and incredibly tight.

It was only a few weeks ago that LVO wrote an excellent piece decomposing Australia’s detonating cafepocalypse.

The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) aggressive interest rate hikes have done precisely what they were designed to: smash demand. The impact has been keenly felt across Australia’s private (market) sector, where activity has stalled.

Australia’s economy is on public sector life support. The overwhelming majority (87%) of jobs created over the past two years have been in the non-market (government-funded) sector.

ANZ has an interesting chart today.

Last month’s Guardian’s Essential Poll said the Albanese government was doing a poor job “increasing wages and workers’ rights”.

Via the ABS.

Via the ABS comes Construction Work. Seasonally adjusted work done rose 3.3%. Seasonally adjusted work done for the private sector rose 1.4%. Value of work commenced rose 13.6% in original terms. Trend work done rose 1.1%. It’s all gubmint. Mostly transport. That peaks this year (in theory, cost blowouts mean it won’t).

Via the Department of Blah. In seasonally adjusted terms, job advertisements decreased by 2.5% (or 5,400 job advertisements) in December 2024 to stand at 214,600.

Westpac with the note. Westpac Consumer Sentiment declines slightly (–0.7%) in January to 92.1.

ANZ job ads are flattening out.

The past few years have seen Australian households sink into a protracted recession.

Westpac says maybe.

The past 20 years have seen a proliferation of cafes around Australia.

WoW continues to be the most popular MMORPG in the history of the gaming industry and the project that has really popularized this genre over the 20 years of its history.

Wednesday’s monthly inflation data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggested that underlying (trimmed mean) inflation is falling faster than projected by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

The AFR reports that global supply of liquified natural gas (LNG) is expected to ramp up in 2025, which is likely to weigh on local producers and the federal government’s revenue.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the monthly inflation gauge for November, which recorded headline CPI inflation of 2.3% year-on-year, slightly above expectations of a 2.2% rise.

In 2013, Labor Resources Minister Gary Grey made the unfortunate decision to allow the Gladstone liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals to be developed without the need to reserve gas for domestic users.