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Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Figures make a mockery of Treasurer's claim
Australia is falling further behind its ambitious 1.2 million new home target, as the number of dwellings started, completed or under construction has slipped. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, 27,663 new houses were built in the March quarter, down 1.3 per cent, while new private sector housing came in at 15,190, a drop of 9.3 per cent. When combined, 43,517 homes were built in the March quarter, down by 4 per cent on the December quarter. Last year, the federal government set an ambitious 1.2 million new-home target in five years under the National Housing Accord. In order to achieve this, Australia needs to build 60,000 homes a quarter. In brighter news, there was a 14 per cent lift in new houses started in March to 47,645. Property Council group executive policy and advocacy Matthew Kandelaars said Wednesday's data was further proof Australia needed to be building more homes. 'Progress against our housing targets was never going to be linear, but we've reached the point where we need to hit housing delivery in top gear just to keep pace, let alone get ahead,' Mr Kandelaars said. 'Official data on completions for the March 2025 quarter, nine months into the National Housing Accord, show we're running 18,147 homes behind target. 'It takes more than a year to build a home and more than three years to build an apartment project. Yet another quarter of poor numbers means more disappointment for future homebuyers and renters.' The data comes days after partially unredacted files were released to the ABC through a freedom of information request showing that Australia's National Housing Accord would 'not be met'. While Labor has committed to building 1.2 million well-located homes in the five years to June 30, 2029, the target is already 55,300 homes behind following its first year of operation. Despite the slow start, Treasurer Jim Chalmers backed Labor's ability to reach the target, adding that he was 'pretty relaxed' about the accidental FOI slip. 'Under current trajectories, we would fall short, but that doesn't mean that between now and over the course of the next four years that we can't consider ways and work with the states and territories and others, local governments and others, on ways to build more homes,' he told reporters on Monday. 'It's not the worst thing from time to time for it to be understood in the broader community that this will be a difficult target to meet. 'But if we all do our bit, we all play our part, as the Commonwealth has been willing to play, then we can build the homes that people desperately need.' Acting Coalition housing spokesman James Paterson said the advice from Treasury 'confirmed what Australians already know'. 'Labor will fail to build the 1.2 million new homes they promised,' he said. 'Under the former Coalition government, Australia built an average of 190,000 new homes per year. Under Labor, that figure has dropped to barely 170,000. To meet their own housing target, Labor needs to build 250,000 new homes annually. 'Instead of building housing, Labor are obsessed with building housing bureaucracies.' Mr Kandelaars said the nation's property industry remained ready to deliver but was being held back by settings that deter investment, slow approvals, high development costs and post-approval roadblocks. 'We're building homes half as fast as we were 30 years ago. That's not just a housing issue but a productivity problem,' Mr Kandelaars said. 'Next month's Economic Reform Roundtable hosted by the Treasurer is a chance to put housing delivery at the heart of the national productivity agenda, which means getting investment settings right and focusing on better, smarter and more efficient planning and environmental approvals.' Sign in to access your portfolio
RNZ News
03-07-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Tight job market limits career mobility for Asian workers
Photo: AFP Asian workers are increasingly finding themselves stuck in their current roles, with the tight job market making it harder to earn a promotion or find work elsewhere. The same is true for employees across the country in such market conditions but Asian workers face additional barriers related to language ability and migrant backgrounds that exacerbate their plight. New Zealand's unemployment rate held steady at 5.1 percent in the March quarter, meaning that roughly 156,000 people are currently out of work - the highest level since 2020. As a record number of job seekers compete for a shrinking pool of opportunities, Asian workers are feeling the strain. Many say they face limited career mobility, caught between an economic slowdown and a tightening labor market. A visitor service coordinator working in Auckland's public sector said low pay was a key reason he was considering leaving his job. "I've been in this role for three years, but my annual salary is just over $60,000," he said. "It's low and doesn't even meet New Zealand's median wage." The worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to job loss fears, said he had applied for nearly 100 roles similar to his current position in the past six months. To improve his chances, he had spent several hundred dollars on professional resume writing services but still received few interview opportunities. Seeking a pathway into a higher-paying career, he spent the past two years studying part time for a postgraduate diploma in applied business at Unitec. Before graduating, he began applying for business analyst roles but has so far been unsuccessful. "I got two interviews with two companies, but didn't get any further," he said. "It's hard to break into a new field unless you're exceptionally good." Photo: 123RF He said his migrant background also made it harder to advance in his career. "Locals find it much easier to get into management positions," he said. "But if you're an immigrant here, I feel it's much more difficult." "If it's hard to be promoted into senior roles, your salary is unlikely to grow," he said. "That's why I want to move into another field." He said he would not consider leaving his current job until he secured a new position with better pay. "I definitely won't quit my current job," he said. "If I don't have a job, I don't have income. I have two kids to care for and a mortgage to pay." A junior data engineer, who also spoke on condition of anonymity due to job loss fears, has been working at a market research agency in Auckland for the past 18 months. The woman said she had applied for 30 data engineer positions over the past four months, hoping to land a role at a larger company with a higher salary and better benefits - without success. "My current annual salary is around $72,000," she said."After two years, you can typically move up to a data engineer role, which pays between $90,000 and $100,000. But I haven't seen that kind of progression in my current position." She said the job market remained sluggish, with few openings available. "Positions similar to mine are limited right now," she said. "I've applied to every role that matches my qualifications and experience. "I only get responses when someone refers me internally, but interview opportunities are still limited. For the jobs I apply for online, without a referral, I rarely hear back." Photo: RNZ Eric, who asked that his family name be withheld due to job loss concerns, works as an account manager at a digital marketing agency in Auckland. Originally from Beijing, he previously spent six years working as a business analyst in China. He said his current annual salary was around $70,000 - significantly lower than what he earned in his previous role. However, he has struggled to find a similar position with comparable pay in New Zealand's tight job market. "I've sent out around 100 CVs since March," he said. "I barely hear back - only one interview, and that was with an Australian company, not a New Zealand one." Currently on a Partner of a Student Work Visa, he said it was difficult for migrants to secure jobs in today's competitive market. He planned to continue pursuing a higher-paying role at a larger company, though he was not optimistic about the job market this year. "I don't feel the overall employment market has improved," he said. "Many people - myself included - expected things to get better this year, or at least not worse," he said. "But, so far, it hasn't gone the way we hoped. We're still hearing about more redundancies." According to Seek New Zealand's monthly report in May , job advertisements fell 2 percent compared to April and were down 8 percent from a year earlier - the slowest annual decline in more than two years. At the same time, applications per job ad rose 2 percent month on month to a record high. Seek country manager Rob Clark said the employment market felt like it was bumping along the bottom of the cycle, and, while things were not getting better, they were also not getting appreciably worse. Shay Peters, chief executive at recruitment agency Robert Walters Australia and New Zealand Photo: Supplied Shay Peters, chief executive at recruitment agency Robert Walters Australia and New Zealand, said the job market in New Zealand remained relatively tight. While there were still a high number of applications for each vacancy, he said many candidates were not necessarily well aligned with the roles they were applying for. "People are broadening their search, applying for positions either above or below their usual level due to the challenging job market and a limited number of roles at their experience level," he said. Peters said the biggest challenge job seekers faced right now was the imbalance between the number of candidates and the limited roles available. At the same time, he said, job seekers could no longer expect significant salary increases, as employers were holding firm on budgets. The Treasury's Budget Economic and Fiscal Update for 2025 expected the unemployment rate would rise to 5.4 percent in the June quarter, before gradually declining to 4.3 percent by the end of the forecast period. The Reserve Bank, meanwhile, expected unemployment to peak at 5.2 percent mid-year before easing back to 5.1 percent by the December quarter. Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, said the unemployment rate was likely to edge higher in the June and possibly September quarters amid ongoing uncertainty. "[It's] international events - particularly tariffs and the trade war, but also unrest in the Middle East," he said. "We think both of those will just delay the pickup in hiring and employment that we have been anticipating to come through in the second part of this year." Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King Kiernan said the labour market remained weak, possibly taking longer than expected to recover. Mark Smith, senior economist at ASB, said the unemployment rate typically followed the health of the broader economy. While there were some positive signs - namely, lower interest rates and favourable export prices across several major sectors - he said it would take time for hiring demand and consumer spending to pick up. "Lower interest rates are feeding through slowly, existing borrowers won't benefit from that until they reach their next reset period," he said. "Households in particular on average have probably fixed their mortgages for about a year - some more, some less - when you get a move in interest rates, you know it can take a full year before everyone actually benefits from it. "Other notable positives are some quite favorable export prices across a range of our major exports - like dairy, meat, fruit and even forestry," Smith said. "There is some good income growth for farmers, but they're not big employers," he said. "There are a few [positive] things there," he said, "but it's not pointing to an immediate upturn in hiring demand." Mark Smith, senior economist at ASB Photo: Supplied Smith said ASB expected the unemployment rate to rise a bit further this year, and New Zealanders might have to wait until the end of the year to see any sign of it starting to decline. He said once consumer spending picked up, industries such as retail, wholesale and personal services might begin to see an upturn. However, the construction sector might take longer to recover due to its long cycles and ongoing job losses, he said. Meanwhile, healthcare and education - sectors with large percentages of government funding - continued to perform relatively well and saw sustained job growth, he said. Smith said New Zealand's adult population continued to grow, driven by both net migration and natural increases. The challenge for job seekers, he said, was that not enough new jobs were being created to absorb population growth. "A key issue is not just when we see employment rising," he said, "but whether it's rising fast enough to absorb population growth."
RNZ News
27-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Job market sluggish, jobseekers facing huge competition
business money 28 minutes ago Economists having been telling us survive til 2025', but so far this year things don't seem to have improved that much, particularly for those out of work. The job market is sluggish, with people looking for jobs facing a huge amount of competition. At last count the unemployment rate was 5.1% or 156,000 people at the March quarter. Money correspondent Susan Edmunds spoke to Lisa Owen.
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The good news? Household living standards are on the rise. The bad news? Just about everything else
There were early signs that the March GDP figures were not going to be good. To start with, the Bureau of Statistics' new measure of household spending that covers about two-thirds of all household spending had already revealed that spending for the quarter was flat compared with a 1.6% jump in December quarter last year. So household spending was worse. Then last week the private capital expenditure figures revealed a 0.1% fall in investment in buildings and engineering, compared with a 0.2% rise in the December 2024 quarter. So private investment was worse. On Tuesday, the balance of payments revealed that trade in the first three months of this year was expected to 'detract 0.1%pts from the March quarter' compared with adding 0.2%pts in December. So trade was worse. Just to top it off, on Tuesday the figures for government spending and investment showed that public demand fell in the March quarter and would also detract 0.1%pts from GDP growth compared with it adding 0.2%pts to GDP growth last December. So the impact of the public sector was worse. To be honest, once you take away households, private investment, trade and government spending, you really are not left with much. So it came to be. In the March quarter of this year, GDP growth was just 0.2%, down from 0.6% in the December quarter. The only good news is the March quarter last year was pretty dire as well, so all up it meant annual growth remained steady at a still extremely weak 1.3%. If the graph does not display click here This weak growth meant that per capita GDP fell again – the ninth quarter out of the past 11. This is not a good state of affairs, and certainly does not accord with the views of the Reserve Bank back in April when it looked at the first three months of this year and suggested that 'the limited information available about activity in early 2025 suggested that the pick-up in GDP growth had been sustained'. Ahh well, at least they can say they were not wrong for long? Well no. In the minutes of the May board meeting released this week the RBA now suggested that 'GDP growth had increased in the December quarter 2024 and year-ended growth looked to have picked up a little further in the March quarter'. Going from 1.3% growth in December to 1.3% growth in March is hardly 'picked up'. The May Statement on Monetary Policy also predicted annual GDP growth in June of 1.8%. To get to that level, the economy would need to grow in April, May and June by 0.7% – the strongest quarter growth for three years. Here's hoping … So what drove the growth that was there? Households were the biggest contributor to growth – although as in all things the context is key. Their contribution to the growth of the economy in the March quarter was about half what you would normally expect. If the graph does not display click here And a big reason for the increase in consumption was a jump in spending on electricity, gas and other fuels – due to the ending of some of the state government energy rebates (which also had an impact on inflation). That is not the type of spending you want to see driving households. All up the level of household consumption is well down on what would have been expected before the pandemic. The Reserve Bank's interest rate rises did their job – they snuffed out spending. Clearly more rate cuts are needed to undo that damage and it is quite extraordinary that the RBA is so sanguine about it all: If the graph does not display click here Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The overall level of household spending and private-sector investment quickly rules out the use of the phrase 'strong' when searching for a term to describe what is going on: If the graph does not display click here And that's not surprising because while home loan rates have come down, the average discounted rate is still more than 300 basis point higher than it was at the start of 2022. But for small business owners taking out an overdraft loan, things are even worse – the rate is 400 basis point higher: If the graph does not display click here But let us not be too negative. One very good piece of news is that household living standards are on the rise. After two years, finally household disposable income per capita is above the level it was in March 2020: If the graph does not display click here One reason for this was there was a very slight decline in the level of mortgage repayments, due to the rate cut in February. This cut actually helped increased living standards in the first three months of this year. But that was a very small repair, given since March 2022 mortgage repayments have contributed about 63% of the fall in living standards: If the graph does not display click here That's a sizeable chunk and it reinforces the damage that is done when the RBA so badly misreads the economy as it has. These figures highlight that not only should the Reserve Bank have cut rates in April but having made that error it compounded it by not cutting rates by at least 50 basis points last month. So far this year the RBA has kept misreading the economic situation and erred on the side of caution. Let us hope these weak figures spur it to cut rates when it meets next month and not suggest it still needs more time to see what is going on. Greg Jericho is a Guardian columnist and policy director at the Centre for Future Work
ABC News
04-06-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Australia's economic growth slows to 0.2 per cent in first quarter
Australia's economy grew by 0.2 per cent in the March quarter, and 1.3 per cent through the year, coming in below expectations. Treasurer Jim Chalmers speaks to 7.30's Sarah Ferguson.
