A raft of new economic data was released just before Easter.
What do the figures show?
- The TD Securities/Melbourne Institute monthly inflation gauge rose by 0.2 per cent in March to be up 2.1 per cent over the year. The Reserve Bank aims to keep annual inflation growth between 2-3 per cent.
- Australia’s population grew by 1.7 per cent over the year to September – the fastest rate in three years.
- Australia’s population stands at 22,785,464 people. Western Australia’s population is growing at the fastest annual rate on record at 3.45 per cent.
- Private sector credit rose by 0.2 per cent in February to be up 3.4 per cent over the year.
- According to the Bureau of Statistics, job vacancies fell by 10.1 per cent in the three months to February to a seven year low of 149,300.
- The December quarter Financial Accounts show that household financial assets rose by 2.4 per cent in the quarter while liabilities only rose by 0.8 per cent.
What does it mean?
- The solid rate of population growth is providing key momentum to the economy. Providing that population growth is planned (and we assume it is), it underpins consumer and housing spending and is positive for all Australian businesses.
- Inflation is simply not an issue. Clearly with inflation constrained, the Reserve Bank has scope to cut rates if it needs to. We believe the Reserve Bank is loath to cut rates again, and more importantly it currently has no need to cut rates again.
- We don’t believe that job ads and job vacancies are providing accurate measures of the state of the job market. Employers now use a raft of different ways to hire staff such as Facebook, LinkedIn, job placement agencies and employment consultants.