The Treasury and RBA believe Australia’s sustainable rate of unemployment is above 4%, but Australia’s leading economists think 3.75% is possible long-term, and have ideas about how to achieve it.
- Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Movie tickets are nearly always the same price, whether the film is a flop or a sold-out blockbuster. Why? And how much more does a trip to the movies cost than 20 years ago?
Australia has never clearly defined what “full employment” means. That’s about to change – and a more ambitious definition could help keep 150,000 or more Australians in work.
Behavioural economics is a discipline that seems blind to empathy. Robodebt showed what it could do.
Even a week ago we couldn’t have predicted this. But after good news from the US, our Reserve Bank now has a chance to cement low unemployment while controlling inflation – without more rate rises.
Australian home borrowers are experiencing much, much more interest rate pain than borrowers in New Zealand, Canada, the UK or US – for one simple reason.
The good news includes a return to real wage growth and a restrained increase in unemployment. The bad news includes even higher home prices and a per-capita recession.
Less than 20 years ago, 69% of Australians’ purchases were made with cash. It’s now 13% and falling. This chart shows how the way we pay has completely changed in just one generation.
Of all the things we can do to boost productivity, working harder is one of the least likely to make a difference.
The Reserve Bank governor has only three months left in the job and he isn’t yet sure inflation is on the way down.
Labor’s new centre will let it trial some new policies. But the government is not yet open to doing cost-benefit analysis on all major projects – like $240 million for a new AFL stadium.
The idea that cutting prices can stoke inflation is correct in theory, but rarely in practice.
Almost two-thirds of the top economists surveyed gave this budget an A or a B – up from the 40% who gave top marks to Jim Chalmers’ predecessor. But they were more critical when it came to inflation.
We can do better than a grand-sounding big-bucks fund.
Chalmers said getting things right this time required a “fine balance”. Future budgets are shaping up to require just as much.
The treasurer’s handpicked advisory committee recommended he lift the base rate of JobSeeker for everyone. He is acting as if it didn’t.
During lockdowns renters ‘voted with removalists vans’, moving out of share houses and in with each other.
More than one million borrowers are set to come off ultra-low fixed mortgage rates this year and next, meaning the full effect of the ten rate rises to date is yet to be felt.
Asked to choose the fairest ways to raise billions, half of the economists backed introducing inheritance taxes. Around a third chose winding back super tax concessions and increased resource taxes.
In the first year of the pandemic, Australians were given a glimpse of a truth so unnerving that economists and politicians normally keep it to themselves.
The wealthiest Australians are taxed differently from the rest of us, because they earn much of their money in a different way.
The Reserve Bank’s statement indicates there aren’t too many rate rises left. History suggests those hikes could come to an end by early spring.
You’d never know it from some of the “socialist tax grab” outrage this week, but Jim Chalmers isn’t the first treasurer to act on this super rort.
I graphed the average online rate for a $10,000 deposit against the Reserve Bank’s cash rate, going back to 2010. After seeing what that graph reveals, you’ll want to call your bank.
Five years ago, Australia had 28,000 financial advisers. Today there are 16,000. So where can you get financial advice? A new report offers a good answer – and it’s something I used to argue against.
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