Roy Morgan Update February 13, 2024: ALP Support drops, Consumer Confidence & Unemployment

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

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly Update.

This week support for the Labor Government was down 1% to 52% and ahead of the Coalition on 48% (up 1%) on a two-party preferred basis.

This result is almost identical to the last Federal Election and if a Federal Election were held today the Albanese Government would be returned with a narrow majority.

Support for the parties can bounce around a few percentage points each week, responding to the issues of that week, Roy Morgan’s weekly read of the nation’s voting intention picks up these responses.

However, the long-term trend has been stable since the Albanese Government’s honeymoon period ended.

Roy Morgan’s polling trends over the last six months comprising over 30,000 interviews with electors show the 6 month average is in line with the latest result (52% Vs 48%) in favour of Labor.

These results augur well for the Government which faces a by-election in the seat of Dunkley in just over two weeks.

Government Confidence was up 4.5 points to 82.5 – a second positive weekly move in a row - but still low.

Government Confidence is well below the neutral level of 100 at only 82.5 because only 34% of Australians say the country is heading in the right direction while 51.5% say the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Consumer Confidence dipped this week – ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was down 1.2pts to 82.6.

Driving the decrease were Home Owners, Consumer Confidence for this group dipped 5.2pts while Renters’ consumer confidence was virtually unchanged and People Paying Off Their Home recorded slightly improved consumer confidence.

Consumer Confidence has now spent 54 weeks below the level of 85 – the longest time below 85 in the history of the measurement.

Inflation Expectations were unchanged at 4.9% this week. Australians now expect annual Inflation to be 4.9% over the next two years.  This is their equal lowest since mid-September 2023.

And finally this week to the Australian employment markets.

Real unemployment in Australia was virtually unchanged in January at 8.9% of the workforce – equivalent to 1,382,000 Australians.

Under-employment in January was 1,618,000, down 33,000 on December and at 10.4% of the workforce – still the second highest rate of under-employment since June 2017.

The overall figures show total unemployment and under-employment – what we might call workforce under-utilisation – was 19.3% of the workforce in January – equivalent to 3 million people or more for a fourth straight month.