Roy Morgan Update September 10, 2024: ALP Support unchanged, Consumer Confidence, Business 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.

With little change on the key weekly indicators this week, the latest Roy Morgan survey shows the ALP on 51% just ahead of the Coalition on 49% on a two-party preferred basis.

If a Federal Election were held now, the result would be ‘too close to call’ and either major party, the ALP or Coalition, would require the support of minor parties and independents to form a minority government.

Government Confidence (whether people think the country is going in the right or wrong direction) was barely changed at 72 – well below the neutral level of 100.

A majority of 56.5% of Australians say the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 28.5% say the country is heading in the right direction.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was down 0.8 points to 82.3 this week. This is the eighth week in a row Consumer Confidence has been above 80 with an average of 83 during this period.

But this is not a good result. Looking longer-term Consumer Confidence has now spent a record 84 weeks (since February 2023) below the level of 85 – indicating an economy close to recession.

This week Inflation Expectations were unchanged at 4.6% - the equal lowest level since November 2021.

So, the ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations indicator shows Australians expect annual inflation to be 4.6% per annum over the next two years.

Now to employment and unemployment. There is better news on both employment and unemployment in August.

Now over 14.2 million Australians are employed (that’s 640,000 more than a year ago) – But remember, that’s largely due to population growth – over the same period the population increased by 687,000.

This strong employment growth has produced positive results on unemployment. Year-over-Year Unemployment is down 1.9%.

The latest Roy Morgan headline real unemployment figure for August is down 1% on a month ago to 9.1% - Roy Morgan estimates just over 1.4 million Australians are now unemployed.

 ‘Under-employment’ (part time workers wanting more hours) – is also down marginally - (down 0.2%) to 9.5% in August – Roy Morgan estimates 1.5 million people are under-employed.

So overall, total unemployment and under-employment – what we might call workforce under-utilisation – was 18.6% of the workforce in August – over 2.9 million people.

Despite a rapidly growing workforce during the past 12-18 months, which has included many new jobs, overall unemployment and under-employment has now been stuck above 2.5 million –– for over two years since July 2022.