Mining leads profits
The partial indicators released ahead of Australia's National Accounts were generally weak, pointing to a pretty flat result for GDP in the December quarter of 2023.
One bright spot over the past couple of years has been the mining sector, particularly the renewed surge in mineral exploration expenditure.
There's been little or no fanfare this time around, but we've seen a record surge in mineral exploration in 2023, to above $1bn per quarter.
This should be bullish for the cyclical Western Australian economy over the next couple of years.
While some of the boom has been driven by the push for a renewed expansion of bulk commodity and copper reserves - and there was also a record surge in gold exploration in 2021 and 2022 - the main driver of late has been the global demand for base metals.
Not unexpectedly, the growth in the wages bill in the Aussie economy dropped back to normal levels in Q4 2023.
Company gross operating profits remained extremely high in 2023 at $556 billion, but it's worth noting that the increase was overwhelmingly driven by mining profits (and not, say, price gouging by the supermarkets!).
Overall, the economy looks to have largely stalled in late 2023, due to the powerful salvo of interest rate hikes.
Australia shouldn't forget just how enormous the enormous uplift in mining investment and profits has been over the past 25 years, driving record household wealth, and a government balance sheet in far better shape than most other developed Western economies.
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In other news, ANZ-Indeed report that job ads renewed their decline in February, falling -2.8 per cent.
Importantly, the monthly inflation gauge came in at -0.1 per cent in February, according to the Melbourne Institute, taking the annual reading down from 4.6 per cent to 4 per cent.
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