CBA: Household Spending Intentions To Fall
The bank is seeing a post-COVID normalisation of consumer spending patterns.
The bank is seeing a post-COVID normalisation of consumer spending patterns.
The CommBank Household Spending Intentions Index fell by 3.8% in April after reaching record-high levels in March.
The dip comes as Australians pull back on home buying, health and fitness, and transport spending while opting to put their hard-earned towards travel, entertainment and retail sectors.
The biggest drop came in home buying, with spending falling 21.5% after gains in February and March and is 13.1% lower than in April last year.
Further falls were seen in the health and fitness sectors, dropping 14% however spending is still up 2.9% on last year. Transport spending fell by 8.6% due to the reduction in the petrol excise but remain 13.5% up on the last year.
With international borders reopened, travel spending reached a new record high in April – exceeding its pre-COVID peak by gaining 10.6% during the month and 41% on April 2021.
Local households are spending more on entertainment, rising 6% in April led by increased activity in concerts and theatres alongside eating and drinking out, yet remains 1.8% down on last year.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia Senior Economist, Belinda Allen, said the seasonal volatility of April data due to additional public holidays meant that year on year movements better reflected the state of the economy,
“With an interest rate hiking cycle now underway the Australian economy is in a strong position. We are seeing a post COVID normalisation of consumer spending patterns, with lower spending on categories that increased during lockdowns like health & fitness, while higher travel and entertainment spending reflects more people being out and about,” said Ms Allen.
“Households have accrued a very high level of savings during COVID, the labour market remains tight and wages growth is accelerating. These factors will assist families with higher mortgage repayments over coming months,” Ms Allen said.
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Continued stagflation and cost of living pressures are causing couples to think twice about starting a family, new data has revealed, with long term impacts expected
Australia is in the midst of a ‘baby recession’ with preliminary estimates showing the number of births in 2023 fell by more than four percent to the lowest level since 2006, according to KPMG. The consultancy firm says this reflects the impact of cost-of-living pressures on the feasibility of younger Australians starting a family.
KPMG estimates that 289,100 babies were born in 2023. This compares to 300,684 babies in 2022 and 309,996 in 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said weak economic growth often leads to a reduced number of births. In 2023, ABS data shows gross domestic product (GDP) fell to 1.5 percent. Despite the population growing by 2.5 percent in 2023, GDP on a per capita basis went into negative territory, down one percent over the 12 months.
“Birth rates provide insight into long-term population growth as well as the current confidence of Australian families,” said Mr Rawnsley. “We haven’t seen such a sharp drop in births in Australia since the period of economic stagflation in the 1970s, which coincided with the initial widespread adoption of the contraceptive pill.”
Mr Rawnsley said many Australian couples delayed starting a family while the pandemic played out in 2020. The number of births fell from 305,832 in 2019 to 294,369 in 2020. Then in 2021, strong employment and vast amounts of stimulus money, along with high household savings due to lockdowns, gave couples better financial means to have a baby. This led to a rebound in births.
However, the re-opening of the global economy in 2022 led to soaring inflation. By the start of 2023, the Australian consumer price index (CPI) had risen to its highest level since 1990 at 7.8 percent per annum. By that stage, the Reserve Bank had already commenced an aggressive rate-hiking strategy to fight inflation and had raised the cash rate every month between May and December 2022.
Five more rate hikes during 2023 put further pressure on couples with mortgages and put the brakes on family formation. “This combination of the pandemic and rapid economic changes explains the spike and subsequent sharp decline in birth rates we have observed over the past four years,” Mr Rawnsley said.
The impact of high costs of living on couples’ decision to have a baby is highlighted in births data for the capital cities. KPMG estimates there were 60,860 births in Sydney in 2023, down 8.6 percent from 2019. There were 56,270 births in Melbourne, down 7.3 percent. In Perth, there were 25,020 births, down 6 percent, while in Brisbane there were 30,250 births, down 4.3 percent. Canberra was the only capital city where there was no fall in the number of births in 2023 compared to 2019.
“CPI growth in Canberra has been slightly subdued compared to that in other major cities, and the economic outlook has remained strong,” Mr Rawnsley said. “This means families have not been hurting as much as those in other capital cities, and in turn, we’ve seen a stabilisation of births in the ACT.”
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