Roy Morgan Update November 8, 2023: Consumer Confidence, Inflation Expectations & Unemployment

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

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly Update.

In the week before the RBA increased interest rates another 25 basis points – Consumer Confidence and Government Confidence both increased, however, support for the Government was down 1% to 52% ahead of the Coalition on 48% on a two-party preferred basis.

Support for the Government, although down 1%, was back in line with last year’s Federal Election result 18 months ago.

Roy Morgan Government Confidence bounced back, up 9 points to 81 – although this is still well below the neutral level of 100.

A majority of Australians – 51% – say the country is going in the wrong direction and only 32% say the country is heading in the right direction.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence increased 2.8 points to 77.8 before the RBA met.

The increase was driven by an increase in those saying now is a ‘good time to buy’ a major household items – up 4% to 22%.

The increase comes as shoppers gear up for the biggest retail period of the year – the Christmas shopping period.

The ARA-Roy Morgan forecast shows Australian shoppers expected to spend $78 billion (Original figures and $66.8 Billion Seasonally Adjusted) in the lead-up to Christmas this year – virtually unchanged on a year ago.

A look at Consumer Confidence by Housing Status shows there was no improvement this week for People Paying Off Their Home with a small decline for this group before the RBA meeting.

There were increases for both Home Owners and Renters this week that drove the overall increase.

Concern about inflation is clearly a pressing issue with the RBA raising interest rates this week.

The weekly indicator shows Inflation Expectations were up 0.3% points to 5.5% this week.

Australians are now expecting annual inflation to be 5.5% over the next two years.

Australian petrol prices have now spent a record 13 straight weeks above $1.90 per litre and were at an average retail price of $1.99 per litre this week.

Next Roy Morgan’s latest estimates show real unemployment in Australia decreased in October – down 0.3% to 9.9%.

The drop is not surprising given the large amount of hiring for last month’s referendum on ‘The Voice’ – held in mid-October.

However, despite the slight decrease in unemployment, there was an increase in under-employment – which measures the part-time and casual employees who are looking for more work.

Under-employment increased 1.5% points to 10.2% in October.

The overall figures show total unemployment and under-employment – what we might call workforce under-utilisation – was at 20.1% of the workforce in September – over 3.1 million people – and the highest overall figure for three years since October 2020.