Inflation
Look under the hood: comparing Australian and US inflation
Headline inflation is 3.5% in Australia and 3.4% in the US. But Australia's underlying inflation is 3.6%, compared with US core inflation of just 2.4%.
Benchmark Analytics
Independent economic and financial services analysis
Original analysis of new Australian economic and financial-services data.
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The death of the corporate super fund
Employer-sponsored corporate super funds were once a significant part of Australia's retirement system. APRA data show just one now remains in the corporate-fund category.
ABS
More than one job - what do we know?
The proportion of employed Australians holding multiple jobs has risen from 5.5 per cent to 6.8 per cent in a decade, with particularly large increases among younger workers.
ABS
Australians over 65 now hold 773,000 jobs
Australians aged 65 and over held around 773,000 jobs in June 2026, up from just 160,000 in 1996. Their share of all filled jobs has risen from 1.8 to 4.7 per cent.
Consolidation and rise of the superannuation mega-funds
Australia had 130 APRA-regulated super funds in June 2021. Five years later there are just 66, while member benefits have risen to $3.2 trillion and the top ten funds now control more than 60 per cent.
Benchmark Indicators
Australian economy at a glance
Political Data Alerts
Know what the new data means.
Priority monitoring and rapid analysis of the releases that matter to government relations, corporate affairs and policy teams.
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ABS
Women hold more than 50% of all jobs in Australia
Women now hold 50.2 per cent of Australian filled jobs. But men still hold more main jobs — the difference is explained by women’s much greater share of secondary employment.
Investors now demand more than 5% to lend to the US Government for 30 years
Something unusual is happening in the world's most important bond market.
Investors now demand more than 5% a year to lend money to the US Government for 30 years, with the 30-year Treasury yield recently reaching its highest level in almost two decades.
A Treasury bond is
Jim Chalmers has a fair criticism of Qld Government
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers is hardly a neutral observer of Queensland politics, but on the state's finances he has a point.
Queensland is reportedly on the brink of another S&P credit-rating downgrade. Chalmers described the prospect as “very troubling”, arguing that Queensland's fiscal
Montetary Policy
Snapshot of central bank policy interest rates
Central banks are moving in markedly different directions. Australia has raised its policy rate by 0.75 percentage points over the past year, while the US has cut by the same amount.
Labour Market
Australia’s industrial strikes have not disappeared — but they have collapsed
Australia’s industrial disputes data show a recent lift in activity, but the deeper story is the extraordinary long-run decline in strikes and working days lost since the 1980s.
Australia’s governments do not have a revenue problem. They have a spending addiction.
New ABS Government Finance Statistics show total government revenue increased by 6.6% in 2025–26, adding $66.5 billion to government coffers. Tax revenue grew even faster, rising 7.0%.
Yet government expenses increased by 8.2%, or $84.4 billion.
The result was a net operating deficit of
Australian Housing Approvals
Housing approvals still below 1.2 million-home target pace
Australia’s housing approval pipeline is recovering, but the latest ABS figures show approvals are still running about 8% below the annual pace implied by the National Housing Accord target.
ANZ
ANZ under Nuno Matos: growth remains a work in progress
ANZ has kept pace with the major banks in investor housing under Nuno Matos, but APRA data show weaker relative growth across business lending, owner-occupied mortgages and deposits.