ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence drops 1.4pts to 106.0 as ‘Omicron variant’ emerges in southern Africa
ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence dropped 1.4pts to 106.0 on the final weekend of November as a new COVID-19 variant known as the ‘Omicron variant’ emerged in southern Africa. Consumer Confidence is now below the 2021 weekly average of 108.1 and now 1.5pts below the same week a year ago, November 28/29, 2020 (107.5).
ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence dropped 1.4pts to 106.0 on the final weekend of November as a new COVID-19 variant known as the ‘Omicron variant’ emerged in southern Africa. Consumer Confidence is now below the 2021 weekly average of 108.1 and now 1.5pts below the same week a year ago, November 28/29, 2020 (107.5).
Consumer Confidence this week was down in Victoria, Queensland and WA, while increasing slightly in NSW and SA. This week’s small decrease was driven by Australians becoming less confident about the prospects for the economy over the next five years.
Current financial conditions
- Now 27% (down 2ppts) of Australians say their families are ‘better off’ financially than this time last year compared to 29% (up 3ppts), that say their families are ‘worse off’ financially.
Future financial conditions
- An unchanged plurality of 37% of Australians expect their family to be ‘better off’ financially this time next year, compared to 17% (unchanged) that expect to be ‘worse off’ financially.
Current economic conditions
- Now 18% (unchanged), of Australians expect ‘good times’ for the Australian economy over the next twelve months compared to 20% (unchanged), that expect ‘bad times’.
Future economic conditions
- In the longer term, under a fifth of Australians, 16% (down 4ppts), are expecting ‘good times’ for the economy over the next five years (the lowest figure for this indicator for well over a year since August 2020) compared to 18% (up 3ppts) expecting ‘bad times’.
Time to buy a major household item
- However, in good news for retailers, buying intentions increased this week, with 42% (up 3ppts) of Australians, saying now is a ‘good time to buy’ major household items (the highest figure for this indicator since early July 2021) while 26% (down 2ppts) say now is a ‘bad time to buy’ (the lowest figure for this indicator for well over four months since early July 2021).
ANZ Head of Australian Economics, David Plank, commented:
“Consumer confidence fell 1.3% for the last weekend of November compared to the prior weekend. News of Omicron likely impacted sentiment, with some new restrictions for international travellers being quickly imposed. Only 16.3% of respondents expect ‘good times’ for the economy over the next five years, the lowest since August 2020. Despite the overall dampened outlook, ‘time to buy major household items’ rose to its highest since early July 2021. As well, confidence in ‘financial conditions’ is holding up quite well. Weekly inflation expectations rose 0.2ppt to 4.8% but stayed below its recent high despite petrol prices surging 3.6% in the past two weeks.”
Related Research Reports
The latest Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Monthly Report is available on the Roy Morgan Online Store. It provides demographic breakdowns for Age, Sex, State, Region (Capital Cities/ Country), Generations, Lifecycle, Socio-Economic Scale, Work Status, Occupation, Home Ownership, Voting Intention, Roy Morgan Value Segments and more
Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
