Well now we know. Australia’s annual GDP growth rate fell to its lowest level since December 1991, outside of the pandemic as consumers hunkered down in the face of elevated borrowing costs and stubbornly sticky inflation.
Annual GDP growth has slowed markedly from a decade average of 2.4%, partly due to the RBA’s rate tightening campaign through 2022-23 to rein in inflation. The cash rate is currently at a 12-year high of 4.35% and policymakers have signaled they’re in no rush to cut any time soon.
Australia’s Q2 GDP was worse than economists expected, growing by only 0.2% over the quarter to be up only 1.0% year-on-year. The result missed analysts’ expectations of a 0.3% quarterly rise.
With Australia’s population still growing aggressively through net overseas migration, population increased by 0.6% in Q2, meaning that per capita GDP declined by another 0.4%. In fact, Australia’s per capita GDP has now declined for six consecutive quarters and seven of the past eight quarters, to be down 2.0% from its peak.
As you will know if you have been following my surveys, the household sector is especially hurting as higher household earnings were partly offset by an increase in income tax payable and mortgage payments and so despite the population surge, Household spending actually fell 0.2% in the second quarter, detracting 0.1 percentage point from GDP growth. Discretionary consumption was hit particularly hard. This puts a number on the political pain of falling living standards from the inflationary cost-of-living squeeze, made worse for mortgage borrowers by the RBA’s higher interest rates.
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