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We’ve been away for a couple of weeks and, while enjoying the delights of the Canberra Centenary Trail (and Canberra in general), quite a bit of data has landed. So, without wishing to rake over old coals and repeat commentary that you’ve no doubt already seen, I thought it worth just catching up with a few charts that perhaps you haven’t been aware of.
The Trend unemployment rate across the nation remained unchanged at 5.3%, but lifted in QLD to 6.6% despite employment growth picking up to 2.35% (2.40% across Australia). The reason being a continued lift in participation (to an almost-7 year high). Hours worked per capita of working-age population (one of our favourite labour force measures) lifted to its highest since March.
The divergence occuring between employment:working population ratio and the unemployment rate is widening and suggests one of the two is due to correct…let’s hope it’s the unemployment rate.
Tourism Research Australia released both the International and National Visitor Survey results for the June quarter. International visitors to Australia were up 2.8% (expenditure +5.4%); in QLD visitors were up just 0.1% (expenditure +5.5%); but in Tropical North QLD the underperformance continued with visitors down 1.7% (expenditure +2.4%). This saw the region’s share of the Australian international market fall again to a new record low of just 9.87%.
TNQ Chinese visitors were virtually static for the year (+0.4%) but the USA (+6.1%) and Japan (+1.9%) saw good improvements. However, the region’s other big market the UK fell by 8.3%.
Domestic tourism continued to perform well. Australia saw a 11.7% lift in the number of domestic visitors (expenditure +14.7%); QLD was up 12.2% (expenditure +11.0%); but again TNQ underperformed with visitor numbers almost unchanged up just 0.1% (expenditure +1.8%). The turn-around in what had been a stellar domestic performance for the region is dramatic over the past 6 months.
Combining international with domestic overnight and day-tripper data we see a lift of just 2.0% in total expenditures across the Tropical North Queensland region; barely keeping pace with inflation.
While building approvals in Australia and QLD continue to slide (down 25.7% and 25.2% respectively) it’s no surprise to see a similar pattern emrging at the regional level. Greater Brisbane is faring worse than the Rest of QLD (down 27.2% and 22.6% respectively) but both remian weak.
Cairns is a similar picture (down 27.4%) while the dramatic slide seen over the past few years in Townsville appears to have run its course with approvals down just 1.7% y/y, at admitedly very low levels.
Looking at things at the LGA level in our region we see Cairns Regional Council (incl Douglas Shire) down 13.4%, Cassowary Coast down 37.7% and Tablelands Regional Council (incl Mareeba Shire) down 48.5%. Townsville City Council, for the first time in more than 2 years, has seen a very modest improvement up 1.5%.
The full Conus Trend Regional Building Approvals data set for the QLD SA4 regions is available for download below. Please feel free to use this data but kindly acknowledge Conus when you do so.
Conus Trend Regional Building Approvals QLD – Aug 2019
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