Motor Vehicle Sales

Dwelling unit approvals - boom or bust

Let's look at the 12 month rolling total for building approvals from the original series to get a sense of how the building boom is going in each state and territory.This measure is worth comparing with the monthly seasonally adjusted and trend series to test the sustainability and likely trajectory of the boom/bust scenario.

Summary: NSW and Vic are in boom. NT, Qld, Tas and WA are in bust. It's hard to call in SA and the ACT (though it looks like ACT might be heading to a bust).

Boom states:

Bust states:

Of the above "bust" charts, Queensland looks looks the best, but if we look at the monthly trend data, perhaps not.

Neither boom nor bust:

While the ACT might look like it is at the height of a boom, the trend monthly series suggests this boom has collapsed. As the monthly trend series can be volatile, I have chosen to lump the ACT in this no-mans land. However, but if the monthly trend continues downwards, then ACT building approvals have collapsed.

Trend unemployment by period unemployed

The number of poeple in the long-term unemployed group (unemployed for more than two years) is creeping up. There does not appear to be a strong gender difference among the long term unemployed.

Importantly, in Australia, the global financial crisis (GFC) did not feed into the long-term unemployment numbers in the same ways as the 1991 recession did.

Household balance sheet

One of my favourite outputs from the National Financial Accounts is the Household Balance Sheet. The print for the December 2016 quarter was published last Thursday.

Some key highlights:

• Australian households have a trillion dollars in currency and bank deposits
• Superannuation is worth more than $2.5 trillion
• Shares owned by households are worth more than $800 billion
• The net worth of households was more than $9 trillion
• Households had more than $6 trillion in residential land and buildings
• At more than 350 per cent of nominal GDP, the value of residential land and buildings is as high as it has ever been.