Despite reporting as “news” data released more than 2 weeks ago (the regional labour stats) The Cairns Post has still managed to get it wrong! Today’s story is based on ABS data from Aug 14th and Herron Todd White’s Cairns Watch for August. Unfortunately when it comes to reporting the …read more
Overnight we saw second quarter GDP in the US revised up to an annualised +4.2%, from an initial +4.0%. The revision came on the back of stronger investment numbers and slightly weaker inventories. The weaker inventory number could point towards a stronger Q3 result as companies are required to restock. …read more
Private Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) for the second quarter was up 1.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis from the previous quarter. This result was significantly better than the market expectation of a fall of about 1%. CAPEX fell 4% from the same quarter a year ago. In Queensland CAPEX fell 2.1% for the …read more
An interesting data set released by the ABS today highlights the gender imbalance that still exists in Australia. Women are more likely to be more highly educated than men and participate in more work-related learning and yet are still receiving only about 88% of the mean male wage, are more …read more
The Master Builders of Queensland Survey of Industry Conditions for June 2014 has been released, and it continues a trend of being rather more optimistic than either general current conditions or their own respondents recent results would appear to justify. Both Queensland Economy Watch and Loose Change have covered the …read more
The Cairns Post runs a story this morning highlighting the fact that the number of travellers through the airport breached the 4.5 million mark in the financial year ending June 2014; and so they did. The full statistics are available from Cairns Airport here. Unfortunately for the ever-vigilant Post the …read more
An interesting report from the Dept of Infrastructure and Regional Development provides data for the year to June 2014 on the performance of our local airlines and airports. Included in the report are details of which airline had the best on-time performance for departures (Qantas and Regional Express) and arrivals …read more
Comments from a reader to yesterday’s post regarding Cairns and Townsville regional labour force data, together with a post from Loose Change on Cairns Participation, have spurred me into taking a closer look at Participation in both regions and the effect this is having on the unemployment rate. To recap; …read more
The ABS release of regional labour market data has shown the Cairns region performed remarkably well in July despite the national and state weakness that we saw last week (see here for our comments at the time). The headline, unadjusted data might appear unbelievably good but when we see through that and …read more
Our friend Gene Tunny (Queensland Economy Watch) gave a speech to the University of the Third Age, Redlands yesterday which is well worth a read. It’s an interesting precis of Australian economic history and a review of what might be in our futures. Of particular interest for our region is …read more