The Australian economy is behaving strangely

Growth for the wider economy has also been slipping into reverse when we account for population growth. Looking at economic growth per person, we’ve been sliding backwards for nearly two years.

Back to households, though. It’s not all bad news. We actually spent a touch more on discretionary goods and services – things we may not need but are nice to have, such as new clothing and recreation. Spending on essentials, meanwhile, fell. We spent more on things such as rent and staying healthy, but dished out far less on electricity and gas thanks to a warmer-than-expected winter, and partly thanks to the government’s energy bill relief that took the heat out of our energy bills.

Household disposable income – the amount we have left over to spend or save after paying our taxes – also grew. Not only did our income (at least collectively) grow by 1.3 per cent, mainly thanks to pay rises, many of us also had our taxes slashed, too. Stage 3 tax cuts came into play in July, pushing down the income tax we paid during the quarter by 3.8 per cent. Those who had money stashed in the bank also got a boost from interest rates on deposits.

But we didn’t do what a lot of economists (and the Reserve Bank) expected us to do – or at least not to the degree they thought we would. Instead of going on a spending spree with our extra cash, we squirrelled a lot of it away. It’s common for people, especially when they’re worried about their finances, to take a while to work out how they are going to spend their extra money.

The household ratio of saving to income – which tells us how much of our disposable income we stowed away for a rainy day – grew from 2.4 per cent last quarter to 3.2 per cent. Since our incomes grew, but we weren’t spending any more than we were in the June quarter, the slice of our pay going towards savings increased.

The saving-to-income ratio is still much lower than the 10 to 20 per cent we were at during the pandemic when the rivers of stimulus payments gushed in, and our spending options were locked down, but it has been climbing back from a low of 1.5 per cent in March last year.

Of course, the money we save ends up sitting idle – at least while it stays in our coffers. We don’t spend it, so it doesn’t flow back into businesses, and doesn’t stimulate the economy to grow.

But our decision to save a lot of the money we got to keep thanks to tax cuts doesn’t explain the slow – but positive – upward crawl of the economy. If households didn’t spend any more than they did the previous three months, then how did the economy still manage to expand?

A big driver of our economic growth was spending – not by households or businesses – but by the government. It contributed 0.6 percentage points to growth in the three months to September. Part of this was thanks to a pick-up in public investment by state and local governments on infrastructure projects such as roads and renewable projects.

But a big chunk of the government spending was on cost-of-living relief, such as the energy rebates, which basically just shifted what would have been paid by consumers to cook and heat their homes, to the government’s shopping list. It meant overall government spending hit a near-record-high share of the economy at more than 28 per cent.

Since overall economic growth only came in at 0.3 per cent (notably lower than the 0.5 per cent economists had been expecting), government spending made the difference between our economy shrinking and treading water.

There were also other factors with a smaller impact on growth, including a slight uptick in the construction of new homes, which pushed up private investment spending. There was also a fall in inventories (generally stock held by companies) and net overseas trade – as imports fell and exports grew – which contributed 0.1 percentage points to GDP.

Although the economy’s usual star player – households – spent less than expected in the September quarter, there are signs things will pick up in the final three months of the year. For one thing, retail trade picked up 0.6 per cent in October, even before all the major discounts started kicking in last month, coaxing customers (and their wallets) out for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

So, how does this position the Reserve Bank?

While economic growth and household spending growth are running below its forecasts, the bank has previously said the level of demand – how much we’re spending now as opposed to how fast our spending appetites are growing – is still too high unless we improve how much (or how efficiently) we can produce things.

It’ll take more weakness in spending, or more progress on slamming a lid on inflation, for the Reserve Bank to start cutting rates. So far, Australian households – and their spending – seem stuck in the holding pen.

Ross Gittins unpacks the economy in an exclusive subscriber-only newsletter. Sign up to receive it every Tuesday evening.