Queensland Gross State Product improves to +2.6%: Business Investment drags; Net Exports first surplus in 13 years

Although the ABS only produce Gross State Product (GSP) data for the states on an annual basis, the Queensland Treasury produces their own measure (on both a seasonally adjusted and trend basis) on a quarterly schedule. Treasury have now released their estimates for the first quarter (to March 2016). Commentary …read more

International Visitor Survey is good news for QLD and TNQ

Today’s International Visitor Survey from Tourism Research Australia for the June 2016 quarter (available here) provides some good news for Queensland, and particularly the Tropical North. International visitors to Australia were up 10.3% for the year to almost 7.25 million. expenditure lifted 14.6% with the average expenditure per visitor up by …read more

Units push Building Approvals higher

The July Building Approvals figures are stronger on the back of renewed unit approvals growth. The seasonally adjusted data for Australia shows total approvals rose +11.3% m/m and are up +3.1% y/y. The breakdown shows house approvals fell -0.6% m/m and were down -3.1% y/y while units were up +23.4% …read more

Regional Trend labour force data…details

Today saw the ABS releases their original July labour force data for the regions. Our own Conus Trend analysis allows us to make some sense of this highly volatile data-set. The headline Conus Trend unemployment rates in both Cairns and Townsville SA4 areas sees some improvement over the month, although …read more

Trend unemployment rates in Cairns and Townsville both fall slightly

The Conus Trend unemployment rates for both Cairns and Townsville have fallen slightly in July. Cairns now sits at 9.6% (down from 9.8%) while Townsville is at 11.0% (down from 12.6%). Further analysis, charts and the full Conus Trend data series will be up later this afternoon.

Latest QLD Govt super “smash and grab” appears to make perfect sense

Curtis Pitt’s latest proposed changes to the way some government employees pension payments are calculated appears to make perfect sense; despite Opposition claims of a “smash and grab”. The relevant section in the proposed Revenue and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2016 (available here) comes in Part 8 – Clause 68 …read more

Jobs data surprises on the upside; even QLD does better

The ABS Labour Force data for July shows the headline unemployment rate dropping to 5.7% (expectations had been stable at 5.8%) with the addition of 26,200 new jobs (expected +10K). However, all of the strength has come from the part-time sector which added a thumping 71,600 while the full-time data …read more

QLD lagging behind in wages growth…unless you work in the public sector

Wages growth for the year to the June quarter was released this morning. It shows wages grew across the nation at 2.1% with the private sector doing somewhat worse (+1.9%) and the public sector better (+2.4%). The net result was weaker in QLD (just +2.0%) but the divergence between private …read more

A look at the changes in the industry make-up of employment in the North

Each quarter the ABS releases a regional breakdown of employment by industry type (according to ANZSIC classification). The latest release relates to data to the May 2016 quarter. Figures are supplied as an average of the previous 4 quarters. We have spent some time looking at the data for the Cairns …read more

Tourism forecast for QLD good (but below the national average)

Tourism Research Australia have released their latest 10 year tourism number forecasts (available here). They show total visitor nights in QLD forecast to rise at an average rate of 3.9% pa for the 10 years to 2024-25. The pace of growth is forecast to be slightly slower in the non-Brisbane …read more

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