Home / Posts tagged "economic conditions"

economic conditions

Insolvency Levels Surged

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
Insolvency Levels Surge
In worrying news for the small business sector, insolvency levels have surged to their highest point in nine years. Insolvency levels in the March quarter were 41.1% higher than the year before and 145.7% higher than the year before that, according to the latest data from credit bureau Equifax. Business owners in the construction and hospitality sectors are doing it particularly tough, b...
Read More

Wages Increased 0.8% in the March Quarter

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
The wages of the average Australian worker increased 0.8% in the March quarter. This takes annual wages growth to 4.1%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The industries with the biggest annual increases in wages were: Health care & social assistance: 5.3% Electricity, gas, water & waste services: 4.4% Retail trade: 4.4% Transport, postal & warehousi...
Read More

Homebuilding Costs Increased by 40%

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
  Homebuilding costs have increased by nearly 40% since late 2019, according to a speech by Reserve Bank assistant governor Sarah Hunter. Meanwhile, general inflation (referred to as headline CPI in the graph) has been less than 20%. So why have residential construction costs grown twice as fast? Ms Hunter said one reason is that building materials and labour have “risen sharply” si...
Read More

Variable-rate Loans Scaled to New Heights of Popularity

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
Variable-rate loans scaled to new heights of popularity, as demonstrated by the dramatic shift in borrowing trends. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, 13.38% of new borrowers chose fixed-rate loans and 86.62% chose variable. But in March 2024, a staggering low of only 1.40% of new loans were fixed, compared to 98.60% variable. This is based on the report by the Australian Bureau of S...
Read More

Commercial Sales Set To Rebound

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
  Commercial sales are set to rebound as transaction activity in the Australian commercial property market appears to be trending up. However, sales activity in 2023 will almost certainly be well down on last year's results. There were $29.2 billion of sales in the office, logistics & industrial, and retail sectors during 2022, according to JLL. Which is considerably higher comp...
Read More

Refinancing Topped $20bn

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
Refinancing activity has topped $20bn in August as revealed by the latest Australian  Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It is 3.9% lower than the month before but 12.4% higher than the year before. One major contributing factor to the rise of refinancing activity is due to lots of people coming off fixed rates right now. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that an enormous amount of refinancing i...
Read More

Refinancing Remained at Record Highs

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
“Refinancing activity has remained at record highs in recent months, as borrowers continued to switch lenders amid interest rate rises,” according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Owner-occupiers and investors refinanced a combined $20.2 billion of loans with external lenders in June, the ABS reported. While that was 3.1% lower than the month before, it was 12.6% higher than...
Read More

Unemployment stayed at 3.5%

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
Unemployment stayed at 3.5%
Australia’s unemployment rate has stayed at 3.5% in March. It now had a ‘3’ in front of it for 13 consecutive months. Since February 2022, unemployment has ranged between 3.4% and 3.9%. In March 2023, it held steady at 3.5% for the second consecutive month, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In line with the increase in employment, female participation rates surged to a re...
Read More

Banks Launched Anti-Scam Campaign

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
The Australian Banking Association which represents twenty-two banks (ABA) has launched a new anti-scam campaign to raise awareness about scams. This is a very topical issue, with Scamwatch receiving 14,603 reports about bank impersonation scams in 2022, resulting in more than $20 million in losses, according to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission. The ABA ads include th...
Read More

Property Downturn May Be Over

Posted on by Laze Spasevski
Property downturn may be over as Australian property prices rose 0.6% in March. According to CoreLogic, property prices rose for the first time in 11 months since April 2022. But while prices increased at a national level, and in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane as well, they did decline in the four smaller capitals. Among the major capitals, Sydney saw the highest increase in prope...
Read More
Top