Roy Morgan Update January 14, 2025: ALP support up, Consumer Confidence & Mortgage Stress

In this week's update, Julian McCrann, Roy Morgan Poll Manager, presents the latest data on Primary Voting Intention, Consumer Confidence and Mortgage Stress.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan weekly update.

My name is Julian McCrann and I’m the manager of the Roy Morgan Poll stepping in today for Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine who is unavailable.

The Coalition has retained a two-party preferred lead this week, although the lead has narrowed with the L-NP on 51.5%, down 1.5% from a week ago, narrowly ahead of the ALP on 48.5%.

If a Federal Election were held now the result would likely be a Coalition Government with a slim majority.

The Coalition has now retained a two-party preferred lead over the ALP for seven straight weeks since the beginning of Summer – the longest stretch in front during this term of Parliament.

On a State-based level the Coalition has retained its lead in Victoria, after the Coalition leadership change in that State and also leads in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.

Importantly, the ALP retains a two-party preferred lead in the key State of New South Wales as well as Tasmania.

Government Confidence (whether people think the country is going in the right or wrong direction) increased 2.3 points to 76.5.

However, this is still well below the neutral level of 100.

A clear majority of 54% of Australians saying the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 30.5% say the country is heading in the right direction.

Consumer Confidence was virtually unchanged this week, largely maintaining its improved start to the year.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was at 87.1 this week.

Inflation Expectations were little changed this week at 5.0%.

Australians are now expecting annual inflation to be 5.0% over each of the next two years.

And now to the latest estimates on mortgage stress. Roy Morgan is the only company to measure ‘mortgage stress’ every month.

The latest ‘mortgage stress’ estimates show mortgage stress increased in November – the first monthly increase since the Stage 3 tax cuts were introduced in July last year.

Now 26.8% of all Australians with a mortgage are ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress, up 0.6% points from a month earlier. However, that is still down 3.5% since June 2024 – before the Stage 3 tax cuts.

The decline in mortgage stress since June is primarily due to rising household incomes since the tax cuts.

However, the latest increase in mortgage stress in November shows that the boost received by households from the Stage 3 tax cuts appears to have already run its course.

Now to employment and unemployment. ‘Real Unemployment’ in December is 9.7%, up 1.1% on a month ago - so, an estimated 1.54 million Australians are unemployed.

The increase in unemployment in December was driven by a fall in part-time employment following the end of the Black Friday sales periods in November. Part-time employment dropped by 210,000 on a month ago.

This led to increases in Australians looking for part-time jobs, up 12,000 to 801,000, and an even larger increase in Australians looking for full-time jobs, up 168,000 to 741,000 – the highest for nearly four years since February 2021.

There are an even higher number of Australians ‘Under-employed’ (part time workers wanting more hours).

Now 1.68 million Australians are ‘Under-employed’, equivalent to 10.6% of the workforce in December – up 0.8% on a month ago. This is a record high number of under-employed Australians.