Two data sets were released suggesting that Australian consumers have been driven deeper into recession.
First, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the April Household Spending Indicator (HSI), which covers nearly two-thirds of total household consumption.
As the following charts from Justin Fabo at Antipodean Macro show, the ABS HSI suggests that growth in nominal spending remained very weak in April:
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Growth in discretionary spending remains especially weak:
The above charts are in nominal terms. Therefore, spending would have fallen sharply in real per capita terms.
In a similar vein, Westpac released its card tracker, which measures the millions of credit and debit card transactions processed by Westpac every day.
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The Westpac Card Tracker Index fell 2.2 points in the last two weeks of May, reaching 132.7 as of the week ended 1 June.
The index continues to trend lower, with the average reading for the last eight weeks down around 0.5 points from the previous eight weeks.
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The quarterly growth pulse remained firmly negative at -1.1% over the quarter.
Given these are nominal data, activity has contracted heavily in real, inflation-adjusted terms.
The state breakdown shows a continued broad-based fall, although Western Australia has a firmer quarterly growth pulse.
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The above data suggests that real per capita household consumption, as recorded in the national accounts, continues to fall:
Clearly, Australian households are stuck firmly in recession.
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