Wages should be firm according to the latest Indeed job ad index. ANZ-Indeed Australian Job Ads declined 1.4% m/m in February, but this follows an upwardly revised 1.3% m/m rise in January. In trend terms, the series was down 0.3% m/m. ANZ-Indeed Australian Job Ads is down 9.2% annually. The series is just 0.9% higher
Last month’s interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) was about as hawkish as possible. The RBA’s statement explicitly noted that the decision to cut the official cash rate by 0.25% was ‘line-ball’ with upside risks to inflation remaining: “However, upside risks remain. Some recent labour market data have been unexpectedly strong,
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Monday released the Q4 2024 Business Indicators, which showed that non-mining company profits have never been higher (excluding the pandemic spike). Despite the stellar profits, Australian Industry Group (AIG) CEO, Innes Willox, attacked what he labelled a “wages blowout”, which is placing “mounting pressure on business balance sheets”:
ANZ CEO Shayne Elliot described Victoria as “one of the toughest” places to do business. It is easy to see why. The Victorian government introduced a payroll tax surcharge in the 2021-22 State Budget as part of a mental health and wellness levy, but only for businesses with a payroll of $10 million or more.
The post Companies sound alarm on failing Victorian economy appeared first on MacroBusiness.
Last month, Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro posted the following chart tracking labour productivity across major advanced nations. As you can see, Australia’s labour productivity growth has been among the worst in the advanced world after recording zero improvement since 2016. Last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) Michael Plumb delivered a speech to a
Alaric DeArment wrote an article in The New Republic in early 2023, where he noted that Americans from marginalised communities were looking to leave because of a rise in gun violence and far right (read Trump’s MAGA horde) politics. He wrote this article not long after he applied for German citizenship through his mother’s side of the family1.
