{"id":342707,"date":"2025-12-12T08:14:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T08:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/342707\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T08:14:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T08:14:17","slug":"australias-household-income-recession-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/342707\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia&#8217;s household income recession ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australians experienced one of the world\u2019s largest declines in real per capita household disposable income after the pandemic, reflecting soft nominal wage growth amid high inflation, tax increases, and rising interest payments.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Real-household-disposable-income-per-capita-2019-OECD.png\" width=\"643\" height=\"490\" alt=\"Real HDI vs OECD\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Australia\u2019s growth in real per capita household disposable income has also been among the softest in the world over the past decade, according to the OECD.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Real-household-disposable-income-per-capita-decade.png\" width=\"639\" height=\"491\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Real HDI vs OECD over decade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that last week\u2019s September quarter national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that household disposable income is rebounding.<\/p>\n<p>Real per capita household disposable income rebounded by 2.5% in the year to September on a rolling four-quarter basis, the strongest growth since the December quarter of 2021.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Real-HDI-annual-change.png\" width=\"639\" height=\"568\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Real HDI annual change\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The rebound reflects a combination of the Stage 3 tax cuts, lower interest payments (following rate cuts), and modest annual real wage growth.<\/p>\n<p>As illustrated in the next chart, real per capita household disposable income has yet to recover to its pre-pandemic trend, but at least it is headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Real-HDI-per-capita-1.png\" width=\"654\" height=\"524\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Realm per capita HDI trend\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>This decade is still shaping as the worst for growth in real per capita household disposable income on record.<\/p>\n<p>As illustrated in the next chart, the average growth in real per capita household disposable income has averaged only 0.51% so far this decade. This compares poorly to the 0.95% annual growth during the \u201clost decade\u201d of the 2010s and is significantly lower than the 3.19% annual growth in real per capita household disposable income during the commodity boom of the 2000s:<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Real-HDI-per-capita.png\" width=\"660\" height=\"577\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Real HDI per decade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The situation is slightly worse when we compare real household disposable income with the growth in the adult population (as gleaned from the 15-plus civilian population published in the monthly labour force account).<\/p>\n<p>The surge in immigration this century and the collapse in the birth rate have seen the adult population grow faster than the population at large.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, real household disposable income per adult has grown more slowly than per capita, as illustrated below:<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Real-HDI-per-capita-and-adult.png\" width=\"645\" height=\"525\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Real HDI per adult\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Since the June quarter of 2012, real household disposable income per adult has grown by only 5.5%, well below the 7.7% per capita growth.<\/p>\n<p>The outlook for growth in real household disposable incomes remains poor given that the Reserve Bank of Australia\u2019s latest Statement of Monetary Policy forecasts that real wages will barely grow in the period ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Australian-real-wages-forecast.png\" width=\"646\" height=\"558\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Real wages\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Without strong labour productivity growth, Australians face another \u2018lost decade\u2019 of poor income growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australians experienced one of the world\u2019s largest declines in real per capita household disposable income after the pandemic,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":{"0":"post-342707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342707","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=342707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}