Roy Morgan Update August 8, 2023: Consumer Confidence, Unemployment & Business Confidence

In this week's Market Research Update, we present the latest data on Consumer Confidence, Unemployment & Business Confidence.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly Update.

First, Consumer Confidence this week fell 3.4 points to 75, reversing last week’s increase.

Consumer Confidence this week was down across all five mainland States.

Driving the fall was a drop in confidence about personal finances compared to a year ago and looking forward over the next year.

Now a record high 57% of Australians say they are ‘worse off financially’ than this time a year ago.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence has now spent a record 23 weeks below the mark of 80 – recessionary risk territory.

There was better news for Inflation Expectations, Australians are now expecting annual inflation to be 5.4% over each of the next two years – down 0.1% on last week.

This is in line with the average level of Inflation Expectations so far this year and also in line with the latest ABS monthly CPI indicator which was at 5.4% for the 12 months to June.

And turning to the latest figures on Australia’s employment – real unemployment is down in July – by 1.2% to 9.1%.

However, under-employment – which measures the part-time and casual employees who are looking for more work – was up 0.2% points to 9.5% in July.

Overall this is still good news with overall unemployment and under-employment down 1% to 18.6% of the workforce (2.82 million Australians).

These monthly movements take place within the broader context of longer-term trends in the Australian workforce – the total number of people employed or looking for work.

The last year has shown a consistent trend with the Australian workforce growing rapidly.

The working aged Australian population hit a 22 million in July, a record annual increase of 672,000 in the year to July 2023.

This surge in the population helped drive the workforce up by 475,000 to almost 15.2 million.

These large increases powered increases in both employment and unemployment.

Overall employment is up 340,000 from a year ago to almost 13.8 million. Full-time employment is up by 186,000 while part-time employment has grown by 154,000.

However, despite the growth in jobs, the number of unemployed Australians has also grown.

Unemployment is up 135,000 and under-employment is up 164,000 compared to a year ago – a combined increase of 299,000 Australians now looking for work or looking for more work.

And now turning to the key weekly indicators, there was little change this week with ALP support up 0.5% to 53.5% compared to the Coalition on 46.5% on a two-party preferred basis.

Government Confidence was down 1.5 points to 80 this week – the lowest it has been since the election of the Albanese Government last year.

This is below the neutral level of 100 because a majority of 53% of Australians still believe the country is ‘Heading in the Wrong Direction’ – and only a third, 33%, say the ‘Right Direction’.