{"id":279170,"date":"2025-11-12T05:15:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/279170\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T05:15:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:15:15","slug":"consumer-recovery-is-a-power-bill-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/279170\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer &#8216;recovery&#8217; is a power bill shock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I keep saying, the household spending recovery is largely a mirage.<\/p>\n<p>The CommBank Household Spending Insights (HSI) Index increased by 0.6% in October, mirroring September\u2019s increase and representing the thirteenth consecutive month of growth for Australian households.<\/p>\n<p>11 out of 12 categories saw an increase in spending, with Transport (+1.2%), Motor Vehicle (1.0%), and Hospitality (+1.0%) leading the way. Australians continued to spend money on auto maintenance, filling up their vehicles, dining out, and placing takeout and delivery orders.<\/p>\n<p>Belinda Allen, Head of Australian Economics at CBA, stated that price hikes rather than just increasing consumption volumes are probably contributing to the recent uptick in spending.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s significant because it complicates our understanding of household resilience and the Reserve Bank of Australia\u2019s assessment of the economy when making future interest rate decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The industries with the biggest yearly increases\u2014utilities (+13.8%), communications and digital (+10.1%), and hospitality (9.1%)\u2014are also among those most impacted by inflation and the reduction of government assistance for energy expenses.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/hsi-by-state-october-25.png\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1080\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Only in Australia would you get a huge energy shock that didn\u2019t need to happen, misrepresented as a consumer-led recovery.<\/p>\n<p>So much so that the lie was believed and promulgated by the central bank.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s your spending recovery.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/16.png\" width=\"691\" height=\"509\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Here is the ABS Household Spending Indicator with volumes versus value.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762924515_38_26.jpg\" width=\"880\" height=\"629\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>With utility bills up 70% over the year, the aggregate value lift in the HSI is about two-thirds energy bill shock. Adjust that for immigration, and it is barely zero growth per capita.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Adjusting the volume growth for immigration gives us roughly a 1.2% per capita gain.<\/p>\n<p>This is with pent-up demand after rate cuts.<\/p>\n<p>I hope you\u2019re enjoying your \u2018economic recovery.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As I keep saying, the household spending recovery is largely a mirage. The CommBank Household Spending Insights (HSI)&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-279170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}