No joy from regional building approvals data for the North

The release today by the ABS of the original, regional building approvals data allows us to update our Conus Trend series for the SA4 regions of Queensland as well as the LGAs in the North. Last week’s release showed Trend approvals in Queensland down 7.7% for the year. Today’s data …read more

SALM data gives us a look at the finer grain local detail

The release by the Dept of Employment of their Small Area Labour Market (SALM) data for the September 2019 quarter, when seen through the lens of the Conus Trend SALM series, gives us our only genuine look at the detail of the labour market at the finer grain level of …read more

Building Approvals improve but not in Queensland

ABS data for residential building approvals in Dec show a 2.1% improvement for the month (Trend) which equates to a 5.9% decline for the year. This is the fourth consecutive month of monthly improvements and sees growth at its fastest pace in more than 2 years. The more volatile seasonally …read more

How bad will the Chinese travel ban be for Cairns and TNQ?

As the government stops all Chinese visitors from entering the country in response to the coronavirus outbreak, economists are scrambling to try and work out the likely impact on the Australian economy from the hit to tourism and student expenditure. It’s clearly something of a guessing game but, as reported …read more

Trend employment growth in Cairns slows again as the regions struggle to keep up with Greater Brisbane

The release by the ABS of their Dec original regional labour force data allows us to update the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend data for Queensland. It shows us the Rest of QLD struggling to keep pace with Greater Brisbane; Trend employment growth in the Greater Brisbane area now …read more

TNQ’s falling market share getting some much needed attention

As regular readers will be aware, we have been highlighting TNQ’s declining share of the tourism market for many years so it’s encouraging to see the issue (finally) being addressed head-on by the region’s main tourism marketing arm, TTNQ. Over the past seven years TNQ’s share of Australia’s total tourism …read more

CPI edges higher but core inflation remains unchanged

The final quarter of 2019 has seen headline CPI increase by 0.7% q/q for a year-on-year increase hwich has edged up to 1.8%. This is unchanged from where we started the year and remains below the RBA’s target range of 2-3%. Nevertheless the RBA will no doubt be moderately pleased …read more

Strong labour force data; QLD unemployment dips below 6%

Today’s ABS Labour Force data for Dec was an almost universally positive set of numbers. Looking at the Trend series we saw the unemployment rate across Australia dip to 5.14% (its lowest rate since April) as 17,500 were added to the number employed (8,900 of them in full-time positions). While …read more

Domestic tourism provides solid boost to the Far North

The release this morning by Tourism Research Australia of the National and International Visitor Surveys for the Sept 2019 quarter (available here) will have provided some light relief for the tourism industry in our region; although the good news was restricted to the domestic sector. Across Australia total domestic visitor …read more

Slowing Chinese visitor growth sees short term visitor expansion at 7-year low

The ABS release of short term visitor data today for Nov 2019 shows that, as the number of visitors from China slows (or goes into decline) we are seeing total short term visitors numbers over the past 12 months slow to a rate not seen sice August 2012. Seasonally adjusted …read more

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