Economics – Page 12 – Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

Hello, I’m From The Government, And I’m Here To Help You! (Honest!!?)

It’s raining “announcables” at the moment, with interesting developments this past week on the housing and finance front as city, state and federal Governments continue to poke at the broken system. Schemes include, government buying off the plan to give construction firms a leg up, cheap housing for essential workers, changes to lending rules, higher council rates for investors, and further crackdowns on airB&B.

While these may sound attractive from a media positioning perspective, they will hardly move the dial on the broken housing system in Australia. It’s a case of fiddling while Rome burns.

In fact, for more on the broken system, join me on my live show next Tuesday evening at 8pm Sydney, when I will be joined by Leith Van Onselen, Chief Economist at Nucleus Wealth as we discuss “The Great Housing Poker Game”.

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Let’s Play Some More Numberwang!

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage point to 4.0 per cent in May, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

With employment rising by around 40,000 people and the number of unemployed falling by 9,000 people, the unemployment rate fell to 4.0 per cent.

In April we saw more unemployed people than usual waiting to start work. Some of the fall in unemployment and rise in employment in May reflects these people starting or returning to their jobs.

While the total number of unemployed people fell by 9,000 in May, this followed a 33,000 increase in April. Unemployment was around 24,000 people more than in March, an average increase of around 12,000 people each month.

“There are now almost 600,000 unemployed people, however, that is still nearly 110,000 fewer people than in March 2020, just before the pandemic.

As a result of the increase in employment and the fall in unemployment, the seasonally adjusted employment-to-population ratio remained at 64.1 per cent and the participation rate remained at 66.8 per cent.

The latest net overseas migration figures showed that Australia’s NOM was 178,500 in Q3 and 129,400 in Q4, totalling 307,900 for the half. This leaves only 87,100 worth of NOM over the first half of this year to meet the federal budget’s 395,000 NOM target for 2023-24.

Given that net permanent and long-term arrivals have remained hot so far in 2024, NOM is once again going to blow way past the budget’s forecast.

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Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

Let’s Play Some More Numberwang!

00:00 / 00:09:25

Economic Update For June 2024

This is my edit of our monthly economic and property review recorded with Nuggets News. Things are getting interesting!

http://www.martinnorth.com/

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Economic Update For June 2024

00:00 / 00:32:31

DFA Live Q&A HD Replay: Steve Keen: Why Real World Economics Matters!

This is an edited version of live discussion, with Professor Steve Keen.

Steve Keen is an Australian economist and author, highly critical of neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific, and empirically unsupported. Mainstream economist have in effect damaged society and the planet because of what they don’t know!. There are better ways to think about what’s going on. His latest book The New Economics.

https://profstevekeen.substack.com

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Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

DFA Live Q&A HD Replay: Steve Keen: Why Real World Economics Matters!

00:00 / 01:28:52

The Housing Market Sheep And Goats (Which Are You?)

Data from my surveys, as discussed this past week, along with other market data shows we have a very divided housing market, with on one side of the ledger many households under significant pressure and begin forced to sell up, while watching their property values slide, while on the other side property investors are still piling in competing with owner occupied buyers, especially at the lower end of the market and bidding prices higher. Actually of course there are many micro markets across the country, and so any headline “data” on rises or falls mask important differences. Housing isn’t just the great Australian barbecue-stopper. It’s our greatest pain point, too. All this only days after Australia’s GDP figures grew at the lowest rate in three decades, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic, and as traders push out rate cut expectations well into next year.

So today I will be looking at the latest signals from the data relating to mortgage prisoners, forced sales, credit growth and investor activity, to provide context for the misleading headlines we see on the property portals.

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The Housing Market Sheep And Goats (Which Are You?)

00:00 / 00:29:05

No Homes For You: The Structural Desolation Of Dwelling Approval Falls!

Yesterday the ABS released the latest data on dwellings approved and they fell 0.3 per cent in April, after a 2.7 per cent rise in March, according to the seasonally adjusted data after just 13,078 new homes were signed off for construction.

Looing at the mix, Approvals for private houses fell 1.6 per cent. While approvals for private sector dwellings excluding houses also fell 1.1 per cent in April in seasonally adjusted terms.

In the year to April, just 163,493 new dwelling permits were issued, a level which has been broadly consistent since December as surging home building costs and elevated interest rates batter construction activity. The annual result was vastly outpaced by population growth over the same period, which soared by 626,871 mostly due to surging net migration levels. From July 1, Labor is targeting the construction of 1.2 million well-located homes over five years, requiring a 12 month rolling average of 240,000 new homes.

Aprils figure is well short of the 20,000 homes that need to be constructed each month if the country is to hit the federal government’s target of building 1.2 million new homes in the space of five years, starting in July.

So the chronic housing supply issue will remain a problem and put upward pressure on home prices and rents, leading to higher inflation, and so higher interest rates for longer.

So unless things change, the gap between the supply of dwellings and meeting demand will continue to grow, driving home prices and rents higher, and pushing inflation higher which leads to higher interest rates and mortgage costs.

Step one should be to trim migration meaningfully back to bring the supply and demand back into better balance, remembering that on capita we are still currently building MORE dwellings than other western countries, as I discussed with Tarric Brooker recently. There is a strategic path to tackle the issues we face, but it seems to be politically impossible so more people will struggle to find a place to live – something which should be a basic human right, and a priority for Government.

http://www.martinnorth.com/

Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/

Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.

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No Homes For You: The Structural Desolation Of Dwelling Approval Falls!

00:00 / 00:09:58

Gaslighting By The Gas Producers Exposed As Australians Pay!

Australia is paying way too much for its home-grown gas, as the over-exporting of gas has driven East Coast gas prices 400% higher than historical average prices leading to higher inflation and a stalled energy transition. This is a huge impost on living standards via direct bill shocks and spills over to energy-intensive manufacturing, which includes building materials, making the housing crisis even worse.

Yet there’s more as The Australia Institute, an independent public policy think tank based in Canberra, just published a report titled Australia’s great gas giveaway – How Australia gives gas to multinational corporations for free.

In addition to exposing Australians to the full international price of gas (yes gas produced in Australia and shipped off shore by huge international companies) due to stupid Government policy, the Institute says that Australian governments charge no royalties on 56% of the gas that is exported from Australia. Over the last four years, multinational companies made $149 billion exporting gas they got for free.

If royalties had been charged on this gas, at least $13.3 billion in revenue could have been raised.

Australia exports LNG from 10 installations. Six of these projects—four of the five in Western Australia and both in the Northern Territory—pay no state or federal royalties. Australia exports 56% of its gas through these facilities.

Sure, the industry is subject to taxes – which are distinct from royalties – including income tax and the petroleum resource rent tax levied on profits. But Institute said the oil and gas companies should be paying royalties as well as taxes on profits and a failure to do so consistently meant Australians were missing out on a fair return on their resources.

ACT Senator David Pocock said the gas industry was taking part in “state-sanctioned daylight robbery”. “We are seeing a betrayal of Australians and our future by the major parties. We are seeing state capture by the gas industry,” he said. “They are absolute leeches on this country and this has to end.”

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Gaslighting By The Gas Producers Exposed As Australians Pay!

00:00 / 00:08:57

Danger! Inflation Traffic Accident Dead Ahead!

The latest monthly data on inflation from the ABS which came out today reported Annual growth in the non-seasonally adjusted monthly CPI lifted from 3.5 per cent last month to 3.6 per cent, above market expectations, while seasonally adjusted CPI is even higher at 3.8 per cent, and annual trimmed mean inflation (which removes food, fuel and holiday travel) rose to 4.1 per cent, from a low of 3.8 per cent in January.

Consumers were hit with the biggest increase in health insurance premiums in several years, following the annual lift in health insurance premiums, bad weather caused fruit and vegetable costs to rise. The outcome was also driven by higher petrol prices, less household goods discounting, stamp price rises and rents. In fact, both goods and services inflation rose.

While the RBA still considers the quarterly CPI the best gauge of inflationary pressures, the new monthly indicator factors into the central bank’s interest rate decisions, particularly when it delivers an unexpected outcome.

Judo Bank chief economic advisor Warren Hogan said the latest CPI figures would test the RBA’s patience. “Inflation is not falling back to target with signs that inflation’s underlying ‘pulse’ might be picking up in 2024,” he said.

“The RBA was very close to hiking the rate earlier this month. This number could tip them over to raising rates at their next meeting on June 18.”

This is not the progress the Reserve Bank wants to see, especially given the weakness in consumer spending evident across the economy, whether in official retail sales data (which is going backwards in inflation-adjusted terms), or the big profit downgrades in the last week from the likes of listed car dealers Eagers Automotive and Peter Warren Automotive.

With inflation surprising to the upside and the Fair Work Commission to announce next week an increase in the minimum wage, UBS chief economist George Tharenou said there was a “lingering risk” the RBA could be forced to raise the cash rate in the coming months.

Households, already under pressure, continue to feel the pain, as the latest data from Roy Morgan on consumer confidence reported another fall, and the accumulating data from the DFA surveys for May will report a further distressing rise in financial stress: The first results will be reported in the Sunday show, with more detailed analysis to follow.

Markets reacted to the news, with the ASX 2000 down 1.3%, while the 2-year bond rate rose 0.84% to 4.183. The Aussie rose 0.13% against the USD to 66.56 cents. The ASX Rate tracker shows a slight rise to October, and cuts pushed well out into 2025.

So, higher for longer, again, and I would remind you that the RBA’s blunt instrument of interest rate rises is only indirectly hitting many of the sectors of the economy. More significantly, global shipping costs are rising again, with Drewry’s World Container Index up 16% to $4,072 per 40ft container this past week. All major routes are impacted.

http://www.martinnorth.com/

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Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

Danger! Inflation Traffic Accident Dead Ahead!

00:00 / 00:11:44