Australian Economy

Roy Morgan reports that mortgage stress has fallen to its lowest level since January 2023, following the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) three 25 bp rate cuts.

As the push and pull over the prospect of rate rises in 2026 continues, the signals coming from forward looking labour market indicators are painting quite a different picture.

From boom levels to more moderate.

I’d better say this before I am arrested in two days. The CBA Labour and Wage Report (is that a religious text I can quote from?) is a terrific leading indicator for wage growth.

Every year, consumer confidence surveys perk up as households bask in the afterglow of the holiday season and make New Year’s resolutions, creating a brief rise in optimism that conditions might be better in the year ahead.

When the ABS released the previous installment of its Household Spending Indicator (which has replaced its retail sales index) last month, the data was further fuel for the narrative that the next move in interest rates would be up.

The US AI jobpocalypse took a breather on Friday night.

In the years since the Global Financial Crisis, the Australian economy has become ever more reliant on government for positive outcomes.

When first moving to a new country, it’s natural to schedule your first few days accomplishing administrative tasks to make living there feel smooth and convenient.

Below is another excellent post from MB reader Erin Rolandsen, CEO of Angelassist and author of beyondtheragemachine.substack.com:  High levels of short-term immigration have made official population measures unfit for purpose.

With the release of the latest ABS Wage Price Index for the September quarter, it was revealed that headline wages were growing right on analyst and RBA expectations, with wages up 0.8% quarter on quarter and 3.4% year on year.

As usual, Australia is having a stupid debate.

The latest national accounts, which show the economy grew by just 0.4% and contracted marginally in per capita terms, provided further confirmation of the increasingly significant risk of effective stagflation for the Australian economy.

2026 is here.

It is the time of year when pundits come out to wrap up the past year and lay the conceptual framework for how they want the world to see the year ahead.

Over the last two and a half years, the Albanese government has embarked on a campaign that one former RBA economist characterises as artificially manipulating the headline Consumer Price Index through electricity subsidies.

In a recent article for the Australian Financial Review, economist Christopher Joye made the case that the expansion of government at all levels was putting upward pressure on inflation and, by extension, interest rates.

By Ashwin Clarke, Senior Economist at CBA: We updated our economic outlook for 2026 this week.

ABC News reported that Australians are flocking to cheap retailers like Temu, Shein, and Amazon, which combine ultra-cheap products with fast delivery.

The 2025-26 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Update (MYEFO) was released on Wednesday. The key economic forecasts are shown below. Headline Findings Deficit improvement: 2025/26 underlying cash deficit revised to $36.8bn (–1.3% of GDP), better than March’s forecast of $42.1bn (–1.5%).

The bond market has turned uber-hawkish following Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) governor Michele Bullock’s guidance on interest rates, where she ruled out further rate cuts and warned that rates may need to go higher to tame stubbornly high inflation.

The Westpac–Melbourne Institute Leading Index has been released, showing that Australia’s forward-looking economic momentum has slowed, with the six‑month annualised growth rate easing to +0.16% in November from +0.32% in October.