See the world through the eyes of an economist.
Homes sales lift… tiny bit
Detached home sales picked up again in October. Sales are still at a low level, but over the past two years, the trend seems to be upward… sorta… kinda.
For some reason, the gain this month was entirely driven by Victoria. Best time of year down there, I guess.
Jobs market still the envy of the world
The jobs market continues to out-perform with the unemployment rate holding at a low 4.1%, and a record percentage of the population in work.
The unemployment rate is tracking nicely in line with RBA forecasts.
While most of the gain in employment has been in full-time work. Nothing to complain about here.
Who has control of immigration?
Immigration is shaping as a hot-button topic again. Treasury supposedly sets the immigration numbers, but there’s a huge gap between what Treasury forecast, and what ended up happening? If Treasury sets the numbers, and treasury can’t get the forecast right, does that mean that nobody is in control of the immigration numbers?
There’s an interesting trend world-wide where residents of a place tend to massively over-estimate how much of the population is foreign-born.
There’s a huge gap in America, but I would note that Australia’s actual percentage is very close to America’s perceived percentage. That tells me that the issue would be easy to weaponize politically if somebody wanted to.
All I want for Xmas is… cash!
Finally, the percentage of adults who say they’d prefer to receive a gift card this year is up three percentage points from last year and a pretty substantial six points from 2022. The share who want gift cards is also now bigger than the share who want physical gifts. Economists have known this all along. Gifts are economically inefficient.
And that’s how the world looked through the eyes of an economist this week.
DB.