Cairns prices in line with Brisbane?

A report from the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office (available here) compares retail prices (in 2013) in Brisbane with those in a selection of regional local government areas across a range of item groups. Prices in Brisbane are set as a 100 base index for comparison. When considering all the item …read more

Cairns Post and more nonsense

A piece in today’s Cairns Post leaves us scratching our head, thinking “where do they get this stuff from?”. Without quoting any sources it makes it hard to know where Peter Michael (a Nick Dalton apprentice perhaps?) gets his information from; what we can say is that none of it is correct.So …read more

Big improvement in Cairns jobs data

The release of ABS regional jobs data this morning has (finally) seen a marked improvement in the picture in Cairns. After very weak data last month (see here for details), it is certainly encouraging to see the data looking a lot better. The recent deterioration in the data for Cairns has …read more

Cairns Youth Unemployment also improving

As we noted last month (see here) the situation for youth unemployment in Cairns has been showing slow but steady improvements. That trend has continued in April. The headline (absurdly volatile) unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 has fallen to 18.1% (from 20.8%). The Brotherhood of St Laurence’s …read more

Building Approvals weak in QLD but the Far North bucks the trend

Nationwide building approvals for March have come in much weaker than expected. Seasonally adjusted data showed a 3.5% decline on the month for a 20% increase over the past 12 months. The Trend data confirms the slowing with a second consecutive monthly decline (-0.8%) for a 21.9% increase over the …read more

The Courier Mail and the Small Area Labour Market numbers

Mark Beath over at Loose Change has written an excellent piece on a Courier Mail story regarding unemployment (and tourism jobs) in Cairns. The paper runs with the idea that unemployment in Cairns has fallen by 16% (from Dec ’12 to Dec ’13) based on an analysis of the Small Area Labour Market data …read more

Cairns Youth Unemployment shows some improvement

Following a wonderful, if rather rough, week out of touch in the Coral Sea, we’re back in the saddle today. Looking back at last Thursday’s regional jobs data for March (which we commented on at the time), I have today taken a look at the youth (15-24yr) jobs data which had …read more

Nothing good in the regional jobs data

After the positive national and state jobs data for March released last week (see here), once again we are faced with very disappointing regional data in the Far North. The headline unemployment rate for Cairns is back above 10% (10.1%) for the first time in 2 years. The headline number …read more

Townsville leads growth in the North. Cassowary Coast goes backwards

The ABS has released regional population estimates (as of end June 2013) this morning which show Townsville as the stand-out growth winner in the North.Total population in Australia was estimated at 23.1 million, an increase of 407,000 (+1.8%) over the year to June 2013. QLD enjoyed the third fastest growth …read more

Building Approvals trend still strong. Local data also stronger

This morning’s release of building approvals data showed a sharp 5% decline m/m in the country as a whole (this still left the annual increase at 23.2%), as units fell sharply (-7.7%); houses also fell 2.1%. These are always highly volatile numbers so the Trend series is much preferred; this …read more

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