Roy Morgan Update December 12, 2023: ALP Support unchanged, Consumer Confidence & Unemployment

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

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly Update featuring the latest Federal voting intention, a jump in Consumer Confidence following the Reserve Bank’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged, a sharp decline in Inflation Expectations, the latest real unemployment figures and a look at the political situation in Indonesia facing a Presidential election early in 2024.

Two-party preferred support is unchanged in mid-December with the Albanese Government on 51% narrowly ahead of the Liberal-National Coalition on 49%.

Roy Morgan Government Confidence was virtually unchanged at 77.5. Most Australians (53.5%) still say the country is heading in the wrong direction and only 31% say the country is heading in the right direction.

In good news the Reserve Bank’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged last week has provided a significant boost to Consumer Confidence.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence jumped by 4.4 points to 80.8 – the highest it has been for over ten months since early February 2023 – and importantly, now out of the sub 80 recessionary levels.

There is also good news as Inflation Expectations came down 0.6% points to 5.0%.

This was the biggest weekly decline for over a year taking Inflation Expectations to the lowest since mid-September, nearly three months ago - and in line with the official level of inflation.

Putting downward pressure on inflation is the sharp fall in average retail petrol prices, down 6 cents a litre in the past week and down by over 10 cents per litre in the last two weeks.

Indeed, average retail petrol prices have dropped by over 25 cents per litre since early October.

The good news for Christmas is that petrol prices are expected to fall further over the next few weeks.

There was also positive news for the labour force with 14 million Australians employed in November – a record – and real unemployment decreased down 0.2% to 9.7%.

Under-employment also decreased 0.3% points to 9.9% in November.

The overall figures show total unemployment and under-employment – what we might call workforce under-utilisation – was 19.6% of the workforce in November – over 3 million people.

As we have said for several months, the monthly movements are within a broader context of a surging population and workforce.

Australia’s population aged 14+ - largely the working age population – has increased by a record 817,000 compared to a year ago – to over 22.2 million.

This surge in population has driven increases in both employment and unemployment – the Australian workforce – the sum of these – increased by 597,000 to over 15.5 million.

Now 14,010,000 Australians are employed – that is 430,000 more than a year ago. 140,000 more in full-time employment and 290,000 more in part-time employment.

Unfortunately, there has also been a substantial increase in the number of unemployed, which is up 167,000 to over 1.5 million.

This massive figure of 3.04 million Australians unemployed or under-employed (19.6% of the workforce) in November is one of the most important problems facing the Federal Government heading into the new year.