ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was virtually unchanged at 74.7 this week.
Consumer confidence has now spent a record 42 straight weeks below the mark of 85 and is now 6.9pts below the same week a year ago and clearly below the 2023 weekly average of 77.9.
Looking around the states, the index was up in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, virtually unchanged in New South Wales, and down slightly in Queensland.
ANZ senior economist Adelaide Timbrell said consumer confidence increased slightly last week, but remained persistently weak.
“It was among the ten worst results since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in March 2020,” Timbrell said.
“The recent decline in confidence has been sharp for those paying off their homes, while for renters and outright owners it has been shallower.
“There has been an increase in the subindices that capture the future financial and economic conditions, whereas in the past two weeks, there has been a weakening in those that capture current conditions.”
Now just under a fifth of Australians, 19% (down 1ppt) say their families are ‘better off’ financially than this time last year compared to 55% (up 1ppt) that say their families are ‘worse off’.
Looking forward, 28% (unchanged) expect their family to be ‘better off’ financially this time next year while 38% (unchanged) expect to be ‘worse off’.
Only 6% (down 1ppt) of Australians expect ‘good times’ for the Australian economy over the next twelve months compared to 42% (up 2ppts) that expect ‘bad times’.
In the longer term, negative economic sentiment has remained unchanged with only 10% of Australians expecting ‘good times’ for the economy over the next five years compared to 22% (down 2ppts) expecting ‘bad times’.
Meanwhile, buying intentions improved slightly with 19% (up 1ppt) of Australians saying now is a ‘good time to buy’ major household items as we enter the Christmas retailing period, while a declining majority of 52% (down 3ppts) say now is a ‘bad time to buy’.