Spread the love
Post Views: 2

Confidence strengthened for a second week, with a close to 9% to 78.2 gain coming after the prior week’s jump of more than 10%. Strength was broad based.

Current financial conditions

  • Now 21% (up 5ppts) of Australians say their families are ‘better off’ financially than this time last year and 40% (down 1ppt) say their families are ‘worse off’ financially.

Future financial conditions

  • In good news more Australians, now 32% (up 7ppts) expect their family to be ‘better off’ financially this time next year compared to 27% (down 1ppt) that expect to be ‘worse off’ financially (a return to a positive metric here).

Current economic conditions

  • However just 5% (up 1ppt) expect ‘good times’ for the Australian economy over the next 12 months while 58% (down 2ppts) expect ‘bad times’.

Future financial conditions

  • And in the longer term, only 12% (up 1ppt) of Australians are expecting ‘good times’ for the Australian economy over the next five years compared to a much decreased 20% (down 8ppts) expecting ‘bad times’.

Time to buy a major household item

  • In addition now just 20% (up 4ppts) of Australians say now is a ‘good time to buy’ major household items, while a majority 54% (down 1ppt) of Australians say now is a ‘bad time to buy’.

The four-week moving average for ‘inflation expectations’ fell 0.1ppt to 4%. The weekly reading dipped to 3.8% from 4.1%.

ANZ Head of Australian Economics, David Plank, commented:

“The Government’s fiscal packages and the flattening of the pandemic curve are helping consumer confidence make further gains. Confidence is now up close to 20% from the historic low reached over the last weekend in March. Despite this, it is still some way below the levels seen during the GFC. The challenge for sentiment over the next few months is likely to be a deluge of poor economic data. We’ve already seen a taste of it this week, with the plunge in business confidence and conditions. March employment data, due out later this week, may deliver more bad news, though the fact the survey week for the report was in early March means it is likely to be some way short of the disastrous labour market data we unfortunately expect to see in coming months.“