Tourism Satellite Accounts confirm 2017-18 was a good year for TNQ…but don’t tell us much else

TRA released their annual Tourism Satellite Accounts overnight for the 2017-18 financial year. There’s a bunch of quite interesting (although obviously already almost 18 months out-of-date) stuff in the release which can be found in full here. Looking at the higher level data we see that the tourism sector generated …read more

Trend building approvals show North bucking the national trend

The ABS released their original regional building approvals data this morning which allows us to update the Conus Trend series for the SA4 regions in Queensland and the Local Govt Areas in the North. Given the latest data at the national and state level released last week provided no sign …read more

Trend SALM data demonstrates Port Douglas-Daintree continuing to lead the way in the Far North

The Dept of Employment released their Small Area Labour Market data for the June quarter at the end of last week. The headline data is presented as a smoothed 4 quarters average at both Local Govt Area and SA2 level. However, hidden in the release is the original, unsmoothed, data and from …read more

GDP remains weak but upward revisions provide some hope

The second quarter GDP data released this morning was slightly weaker than expectations, although upward revisions to past quarters saw the year-on-year number actually somewhat better than had been hoped for.  Seasonally adjusted GDP rose 0.4% q/q for a year-on-year increase of 1.7% (up from 1.6% in the previous quarter). …read more

Building Approvals slide again in Oct

Data today for Ocotber shows no sign of the slide in residential building approvals stopping; although, if we’re looking for positives, then the Trend rate of that decline sits at it’s slowest for a year. In Australia approvals fell 8.1% m/m or 23.6% for the year (seasonally adjusted). Given the …read more

Trend Jobseekers continue to decline in Cairns

The release of the original Jobseeker data from the Dept of Social Services for October allows us to update the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Jobseeker Trend data for Cairns and Townsville. It confirms the continued decline in the number of people receiving Youth and Newstart Allowances in the regions. Cairns has …read more

The drivers behind Participation changes across QLD

There’s been plenty written about the fact that the Participation Rate across Australia is at, or near, record highs and the effect this has had on suppressing unemployment rate declines, even as employment growth remains reasonable. Participation rates are so high largely due to significant shifts in the participation of the …read more

Regional labour force data still strong for Cairns despite Trend unemployment rate edging higher

The release this morning by the ABS of their original, unadjusted labour force data for regions allows us to update our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend data for October. With the State Trend unemployment rate sitting at 6.5%, up from 6.1% a year earlier, (see here for full national …read more

Diversity in regional economies in QLD and NSW

Last week at the launch of the Invest Cairns initiative from The Cairns Post and Advance Cairns the issue of economic diversity, and in particular the diversity of the Cairns economy, was a major topic of conversation. My presentation at the launch presented some clear evidence that the Cairns economy …read more

QLD economy slowed sharply in 2018/19

Earlier this week saw the release by Queensland Treasury of the State Accounts for the second quarter of 2019. As we noted last quarter, this data gets precious little coverage and yet is, in our opinion, a very useful indicator of how the State economy has been performing. While the ABS produce …read more

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