Jobs, inflation and luxury spending all keep setting records

While MPs take a welcome break after the fire and fury of the May election campaign, the economy is ticking over nicely, as Alan Austin reports.

NATIONAL ELECTIONS that change governments in liberal democracies, or threaten to do so, risk economic instability. Canadians, who went to the polls in late April, watched their jobless numbers increase every month from January to April. The stock market index tumbled from a peak of 25,808 in late January to 24,763 on election eve. Business confidence fell from 55.3 index points in February to 47.9 in April.

Much the same happened in the United Kingdom last year as voters ousted the Tories after 14 years. The stock exchange lost 2.7% from its all-time high in May by election day in July. The unemployment rate lifted from 3.8% in December 2023 to 4.4% in April and May 2024.

The U.S. economy has been in turmoil since President Trump took office in January and has been proclaiming destructive tariffs, then chickening out. Some indicators have improved, including employment, retail sales and exports, as businesses have sought to beat the looming calamity and chaos. Others deteriorated immediately, including business confidence, gross domestic product (GDP) and stock exchange values.

Few hold out hope for economic success there as long as the lifelong criminal grifter and his clown car of misfits continue to try to run the White House.

Albo and Dr Jim steadily reduce poverty and homelessness — at last

While more still needs to be done, efforts to combat severe disadvantage in Australia are working.

Australia the stand-out success

Meanwhile, Down Under, Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ deft economic management continues to chalk up records.

Exports surged to a 14-month high of $45.35 billion in March, reversing the February decline as negotiations with the White House over its tariffs appear on track. Expansions with China, India and South Korea balance any disturbance with U.S. trade.

The jobless rate in April was steady at 4.07%, marking 41 months below 4.25%, the longest streak since records began in 1978.

Youth unemployment, job participation, underemployment and underutilisation are healthier now than at any time since Wayne Swan was Treasurer in 2008.

Inflation declined again in April to 2.34%, making three consecutive monthly falls and nine months within the Reserve Bank’s optimum band between 2% and 3%. That’s the best run since monthly records have been kept.

Core inflation was 2.8%, within the optimum band for the fifth consecutive month. Interest rates were cut again in May to 3.85%, with further reductions likely soon.

Australia is now the world’s only major economy with its jobless rate below 4.2%, inflation below 2.4% and continual GDP growth for the last three years.

Labor victory proves public rejected malicious media falsehoods

Saturday’s electoral mauling of the Coalition was a resounding rejection of media lies and distortions.

Consumer spending boom accelerating

All recent releases from the Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and other agencies confirm the Coalition’s destructive surges in living costs are behind us as consumption of luxury items reaches new records.

Australians returned from 840,080 overseas trips in March – the highest for March in any year – and 9.5% above the second-highest, in 2024.

Retail sales on discretionary items continue to surge, with dining out, cosmetics and other luxuries in April at a fresh record 31% of all retail turnover.

Housing program well underway

Houses approved to be built by the private sector increased to 9,349 in April, according to last Friday’s ABS report. That brings the total for the year to date to 36,797, which is 4.7% higher than for the same period last year and 8.8% above 2023.

Total private sector dwelling approvals, including for apartments, have now reached 62,473 for the year to date, a thumping 18% higher than last year.

Overall approvals for all new dwellings, public and private, are 63,586, up 17.9% over 2024.

Where to for economics reporters?

This leaves the mainstream newsrooms in an exquisite dilemma. Their main charter is to convince voters that the Coalition manages the economy better than Labor. Yet all the data proves the opposite.

What has happened already at Sky News, the Mail Online and probably the Murdoch tabloids – which we seldom read, so can’t be certain – is that they have discontinued virtually all economic reporting. The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have scaled this back dramatically. None of those outlets has reported fully the favourable outcomes summarised briefly above.

Australia sets impressive trade records which newsrooms refuse to report

Recent World Bank data provides another endorsement of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s economy.

Australia’s principal journal on economics and finance, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) has also studiously avoided reporting Australia’s remarkable surge through the global rankings over the last three years.

Instead, it now devotes extensive space to a range of fanciful future scenarios with scant factual basis and hence little likelihood of realisation.

In recent days, these have included:

In the last of these, AFR editor Michael Stutchbury identifies Labor’s policy goals as ‘growing the economy, delivering lasting cost-of-living relief, strengthening Medicare, building more homes and increasing investment in renewables’. He laments that ‘Labor's progressive patriotism has no plan to actually deliver on most of these politically attractive promises’.

That is pure nonsense. Labor is delivering, as data from the ABS and the other local and foreign agencies proves.

The AFR’s problem is that it shows no interest in reading these reports, let alone conveying them to the public — which should be its principal job.

Imagining whimsical future scenarios involving AI, WFH, the RBA, the ASX and GFCs may fill column inches in the AFR. But is it journalism?