Greater Brisbane showing most of the improvment in building approvals

As we noted last week (see here), the decline in building approvals appears to have at least slowed. Today sees the release of the original ABS regional approvals data which allows us to update our Conus Trend series. This shows that the bulk of the ‘improvement’, in the form of …read more

Trend Jobseekers continue to fall despite rises in unemployed

The Dept of Social Services original Jobseekers data for November, released today, allows us to update our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Jobseeker series for Cairns and Townsville. It shows that, while the number unemployed has lifted in recent months, the Trend number of people claiming Youth and Newstart Allowances has …read more

Labour Account highlights the weakness in Regional QLD income growth

Today’s release of the Sept 2019 Labour Account data series provides a wealth of information. One thing it allows us to do is take a  look at incomes across various industry sectors and how they have changed in the past 12 months. The table below shows, for selected industries, the year-on-year changes …read more

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 There’s a bunch of quite interesting (although obviously already almost 18 months out-of-date) stuff in the release which can be found in full here.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 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

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

Regional Building approvals; Cairns edges higher, Townsville very slightly lower

Last week saw the national and state building approvals data show a continued decline, although the pace of that decline has slowed. Queensland Trend approvasl fell by 19.1% y/y which was the slowest rate of decline in a year. Today’s original data from the ABS (when seen through the lens …read more

Trend Jobseeker data suggests Cairns labour market remains robust

The latest data from the Dept of Social Services of the number claiming Youth and Newstart Allowances in the Cairns region (when seen through the lens of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Jobseeker Trend) suggests that the labour market in the region remains robust. This despite a slight up-tick in the …read more

Employment continues to lift in Cairns but surging participation sees unemployment rate up

The release by the ABS of the Sept original regional labour force data today allows us to update our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend for the QLD regions. With the state-wide Trend unemployment rate lifting to 6.6% (see commentary earlier) it is no surprise to see the Trends at a regional …read more

Major post holiday chart-dump. Employment, Tourism and Regional Building Approvals

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 …read more

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