Hi all, A quick note to offer guidance on the new website. As well as the layout changes that make it easier to access content for new readers, it comes with a dramatically improved sign-up and resubscription process, greatly enhanced speed, and a much better mobile experience (since 95% of traffic is now phone!). The
Wednesday’s Q1 2025 wage price index from the ABS recorded a slight rebound, with wages growing by 0.9% over the quarter and by 3.4% annually: Public sector enterprise agreements drove the rebound in wages. These drove more than half (54%) of the total quarterly wage increase. Real wages remained in the gutter, tracking 6.1% below
AUD/USD EUR/USD USD/JPY GBP/USD Gold WTI Brent Australia 200 US S&P 500 UK 100 Japan 225
Via Roy Morgan. In April 2025, Australian ârealâ unemployment increased 176,000 to 1,780,000 (up 1% to 11.2% of the workforce) with more people joining the workforce and overall employment dropping in April. The expansion in the workforce was the main driver of the increase in unemployment with 156,000 people joining the workforce lifting the number
A few weeks back, amid the turmoil of the Trump Administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, the futures market was pricing five more rate cuts this year. Earlier this week, the US and China agreed to massively reduce tariffs for 90 days while they negotiate a longer-term deal. US tariffs will be lowered to 30% (from 145%)
When the deeply conflicted Saul Kavonic is the go-to guy for media energy analysis, no country could survive. His analysis here includes: ALP broke the gas market by intervening in 2022. LNP lost the election owing to gas reservation policies. We need a pro-business and pro-market approach to energy. Not all of this is horseshit.
A bit of a wallflower, though, and not much joy for steel. The latest CISA output has faded to bang on year-ago levels. The growth upgrades have begun. Goldman. We had assumed that the US-China trade talks in Geneva would reduce tariff rates on Chinese products from >100% to 50-60%. The joint announcement released on
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the Q1 wage price index, which rose by 0.9% over the quarter to be 3.4% higher year-on-year: The result was stronger than expected, with analysts tipping a 0.8% rise over the quarter and 3.2% year-on-year. The rise in wage growth was driven by the public sector, where
Australia’s manufacturing industry is in terminal decline, falling to only around 5% of the economy in 2024, down from around 14% in the late 1970s. Australia has the lowest manufacturing share in the OECD. One of the recent causes of Australian manufacturing decline has been soaring energy costs on the East Coast of Australia. East
Labor is set to have more than 90 seats in the lower house when the new parliament sits for the first time. However, Crispin Hull has questioned the notion that Labor won this month’s federal election in a “landslide”: In fact, fairly modest swings were hugely magnified and amplified by the electoral system to result
The Market Ear on the recession that never was. Best recession ever Once again, the recession never came. Economists and markets spent much of the past year bracing for a downturnâciting rate hikes, inverted yield curves, and slowing indicatorsâonly to watch the economy remain stubbornly resilient. Itâs a familiar pattern. As the old adage goes, “macroeconomists
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for the nation to take back its borders, saying the UK is becoming an âisland of strangersâ and that immigrants should learn to speak English. He has announced sweeping immigration reforms with the aim of reducing net overseas migration back to pre-pandemic levels. NEW: UK Prime Minister
DXY took a breather. AUD bounced. Lead boots to the moon. Gold prays it ain’t so. Metals go for growth. Miners still stuffed. EM yawn. Junk says nothing ever happened. No yield relief. Stocks only go up. Wall Street bears are in full retreat. Goldman. We expect this move to leave the US effective tariff
Indian students and migration agents celebrated Labor’s federal election victory as a green light to immigration. The Indian community and migration agents know that the Albanese Labor government is a soft touch on immigration. Their view is well-founded, with record international student enrolments: Record graduate visas on issue: And record bridging visas on issue as
The latest ASIC data shows that the construction sector leads the nation’s insolvencies, with 2,795 firms going under so far this financial year, representing a 24% increase on 2024. The following chart from Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro illustrates the rising construction sector insolvencies, which are tracking at around double the pre-pandemic norm: Last week,
AUD/USD EUR/USD USD/JPY GBP/USD Gold WTI Brent Australia 200 US S&P 500
By Stephen Saunders Labor has the ideal ABC for 2025-31âa powerful and complacent woke-left propaganda-ministry. The broadcasterâs overdue shunt of overrated Laura Tingle is typical. For wicked immigration-influencers like âindependentâ Abul Rizvi, or Australian un-National Universityâs Liz Allen and Alan Gamlen, itâs second nature to play the Racist Card to shut down popular resistance to
According to the Council to Homeless Persons (CHP), Victoria has the nationâs lowest level of social housing as a proportion of the overall housing stock. Public housing in Victoria has slumped from a high of around 4% in 1994 to a low of about 2.4% currently. The figure rises to around 2.9% when community housing
We can’t make plastics for anything. Nor windows for anything. Nor towers for anything. Nor explosive inputs. Nor anything for anything. The one thing you would think we were good at is making shit. But no, the great Australian idiot can no longer even take a dump. AFR. High power prices could force the closure of
Let’s take a walk down memory lane. The date is 13 August 2019, six months before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Australia. Infrastructure Australia’s (IA) Australian Infrastructure Audit was released, warning that $40 billion a year of infrastructure investment is needed to catch up with Australia’s voracious population growth. Otherwise, productivity and living standards will
Westpac with the note. Westpac Consumer Sentiment Index up 2.2% to 92.1 in May. ⢠Index recovers about a third of Aprilâs tariff-related fall. ⢠Solid rebound in views on finances led by sharemarket rally, lower fuel prices. ⢠Benign inflation shores up consumer expectations for interest rate cuts. Consumer sentiment has recovered just over
Goldman with the note. On Friday 5/9, we hosted a virtual group meeting with the authors of the Logistics Managers Index, Dale and Zac Rogers, who are observing a situation where inventories have built up (as per their surveys of large logisticsâ managers) ahead of tariffs and amid the ongoing 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs;
Last month, Ben Phillips from ANU’s Centre for Social Research published a spurious analysis claiming that “lower migration wont ‘free up housing’”, because “as population increases dwelling numbers also increase”, and “with fewer migrants we’d also have fewer dwellings”. Phillips’ analysis was comprehensively demolished on the grounds that: Very few migrants work in construction. Therefore, migrants
The Market Ear on the chaos of the child president. Break away SPX is crushing the short term resistance around 5700 (futures), trading well above the 200 day for the first time since March. 5900 is the first resistance to watch. A close above that area and people will be starting to mention ATHs… Source:
Alan Kohler published a stinging critique of the Australian economy, which he described as a “basket case”: Productivity is declining and housing is unaffordable. Economic growth depends entirely on government spending and immigration, and high immigration has not been matched with enough infrastructure and housing to support it; as a result, Australia is divided, defensive,
DXY is back as the child president spews his slop in a hard reverse. AUD has switched from safe haven to growth proxy, Lead boots to the moon! That is the ugliest double top on gold I can remember. Metals vote for growth over tariffs. Miners maybe. EM nears breakout. Grow my junk! Yield pause.
