More job losses
Not a whole lot of upbeat news out there in the Aussie economy!
Today, it was the turn of QANTAS to announce that 850 roles would be cut, ostensibly due to 'AI', though how much that's the case versus offshoring to India is somewhat open to interpretation.
Westpac's consumer sentiment survey showed confidence slumping to a 4-year low and unemployment expectations rising further to well above their long-term average, while the sentiment for household finances is essentially as depressed as we've seen since the early 1990s recession.
NAB's Business Survey is probably my favourite real-time indicator of what's going on in the economy, and it made for fairly glum reading too.
Business confidence (-15 index points) and business conditions (-2 index points, to a 6-year low) readings both moved lower this month.
Forward orders (-12) are now seemingly collapsing, with several industries reporting a sharp drop-off, including manufacturing and construction, for example.
Source: NAB Survey
Retail conditions fell to a deeply negative reading of -19, while there was a sharp slowing in costs growth for the retail sector.
Or, to put it another way, in the local vernacular...
In other news, the latest OSR data shows that the number of home transactions in New South Wales is approaching the pandemic's record lows for the data series, which will present a few challenges for the state government.
Perhaps not entirely unrelated to this, the government's primary vote poll fell to a new record low of 26 per cent this week, according to the AFR.
Oil prices plunge
Oil prices have fallen sharply over the past week, while firms all across the developed world are announcing redundancies, largely attributed to 'AI' (accurately or otherwise).
Overall, it looks like the peak of the interest cycle - for Australia at least - probably came and went sometime between the end of October and today.
Oil prices fell to under $85/barrel today as Trump has suggested that further strikes on Iran will not be deemed necessary.
The price of oil is now down -19 per cent from the 30 October highs, and Brent Crude is down -22 per cent over the past couple of weeks.
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