Australia's two-speed business economy: mining profits surge while retail profits slump

Australia's latest business indicators reveal an increasingly uneven private-sector economy, with booming mining profits sitting alongside much weaker results in consumer-facing industries.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics' Business Indicators release for the June quarter 2026 measures private-sector sales, wages, profits and inventories. Company gross operating profits rose 1.8 per cent in the quarter and were 7.4 per cent higher than a year earlier.

But the aggregate result disguises a striking divergence between industries.

Mining company profits jumped 6.8 per cent during the quarter. Professional, Scientific and Technical Services profits increased 4.6 per cent and Manufacturing rose 1.3 per cent.

At the other end of the economy, Retail Trade profits fell 5.2 per cent in just three months, while Wholesale Trade profits declined 2.9 per cent.

The difference is particularly interesting when compared with sales volumes.

Mining recorded a 3.3 per cent increase in real sales during the quarter, the strongest result reported by the ABS. Retail sales volumes, by contrast, increased only 0.4 per cent and were just 0.8 per cent higher than a year earlier.

Wholesale sales volumes also increased 0.6 per cent despite the industry's fall in profits.

These figures should not be interpreted as profit margins: the ABS profit measures are in current dollars while the sales figures used here are chain-volume measures that remove price effects.

Nevertheless, the direction is revealing. Australia's headline corporate profit recovery is being disproportionately driven by mining and selected business-service industries, while the parts of the economy most directly exposed to household spending remain considerably weaker.