Roy Morgan Update September 12, 2023: Federal Vote, Consumer Confidence & Unemployment

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

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly Update.

Even after the Reserve Bank decided NOT to increase interest rates, there’s not much good news in the numbers this week.

Firstly, turning to the Key Weekly Indicators and the latest Roy Morgan Poll shows ALP support down another 0.5% to 52.5% compared to the Coalition on 47.5% on a two-party preferred basis.

Government Confidence was down by 5.5 points to 83 this week – dropping back after two weeks of increases.

More Australians say the country is ‘going in the wrong direction’, 49.5%, up 1.5% in a week. Fewer say the country is ‘going in the right direction’, 32.5% (down 4%).

Consumer Confidence was down 1.1 points to 77.6 this week.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence has now spent a record 28 weeks below the mark of 80.

This figure below 80 is alarmingly deep in recessionary risk territory. The latest GDP figures released last week from the ABS showed the Australian economy grew by 0.4% in the June quarter 2023. But on a per capita basis, GDP per head went backwards for a second straight quarter.

Some economists and media commentators are referring to this as a ‘per capita’ recession – the only reason the economy grew in the first six months of this year is that the population grew substantially – more on that when we look at Australia’s employment situation.

Inflation Expectations were virtually unchanged at 5.2% this week (down from 5.3% last week). Australians are now expecting annual inflation to be 5.2% over the next two years.

And turning to Roy Morgan’s latest figures on Australia’s employment – real unemployment increased significantly in August – up 1.9% to 11% - the highest for over two years since March 2021 – the month that the pandemic job support program JobKeeper ended.

Under-employment – which measures the part-time and casual employees who are looking for more work – was down 0.4% points to 9.1% in August.

The overall figures show total unemployment and under-employment – what we might call workforce under-utilisation – rising significantly, up 1.5% to 20.1% of the workforce - to almost 3.1 million people.

This is the highest combined unemployment and under-employment in the economy since January 2021 – when the economy was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.