Home |  site-map |  indonesia |  indonesian-single-source-articles |  asteroid-user-registration |

Roy Morgan OZ Panel Login  |  Mail Diary Panel Login |   careers |  contact-us |

The largest contributors to the fall in the weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating are increased worries amongst Australians about the next 12 months.

Today more than half of Australians 61% (up 10%)  expect “bad times” for Australia economically over the next 12 months compared to just 13% (down 2%) of Australians that expect “good times” economically.

Australians are also increasingly worried about their family’s financial situation over the next 12 months with 25% (up 6%) of Australians expecting their family to be “worse off financially” this time next year compared to 32% (down 4%) of Australians that expect their family to be “better off financially.”

Looking back over the past year, 37% (up 3%) of Australians say that their family is “worse off financially” than a year ago compared to 26% (down 3%) that say their family is “better off financially” than a year ago.

In terms of shopping for major household goods, 43% (down 2%) of Australians said “now is a good time to buy” major household items while 33% (up 7%) of Australians said “now is a bad time to buy.”

Over the longer-term, 28% (down 4%) of Australians said they expect Australia to have “good times” economically over the next five years compared to 27% (up 5%) that expect Australia to have “bad times.”

Gary Morgan says:

“The large drop in the weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating (down 9.1 points in a week and 15.2 points in 2 weeks) shows Australians are becoming increasingly worried about the economic situation and the prospect of a recession.

“The news of large job cuts by major companies — including 6,000 jobs cut by BHP Billiton — an icon of the recent mining boom, confirms tough economic conditions are starting to effect working Australians.

“Australian society must face the challenges of 2009 together, there is simply no other way to deal with slowing economic growth and Australia’s first recession for 18 years, unless Government, business — including the banks, and the community all work together to maintain economic growth and increase employment.

 “Next Tuesday, the RBA meets for the first time in 2009. The RBA must continue its decisive rate-cutting of late 2008 and I believe interest rates should next week be reduced by 2% to 2.25%.

“Australia now has negative inflation with interest rates the highest in the developed world. In deflationary economic situations interest rates must be close to zero to promote growth.

“However, interest rate cuts are useless unless the ‘banks’ pass on the cuts to consumers — if credit card rates stay at 16%, interest rate cuts won’t make a difference to consumer confidence and consumer spending.

“Reductions in RBA interest rates must be passed on by the ‘banks.’ If the ‘banks’ won’t pass on RBA interest rate cuts, the Government must put a ‘ceiling’ on the gap ‘banks’ are allowed to charge above the RBA interest rate.”

This weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence rating is based on 1,129 face-to-face interviews conducted Australia-wide with men and women aged 14 and over on the weekend of January 24/25, 2009.

For further information:

Gary Morgan:                    Office + 61 3 9224 5213           Mobile + 61 411 129 094

Michele Levine:                  Office + 61 3 9224 5215           Mobile + 61 411 129 093

Margin of Error

The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. The following table gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. The figures are approximate and for general guidance only, and assume a simple random sample.  Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.

Results for the weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating* for the component questions over the more recent surveys are as follows:
2008 (October - December) - Weekly												Oct				Nov					Dec
												4/5	11/12	18/19	25/26	1/2	8/9	15/16	22/23	29/30	6/7	13/14	20/21
Interviews												1,183	981	1,064	1,072	1,060	1,100	1,045	989	1,140	1,109	1,016	988
Q1 Would you say you and your family are better-off financially or worse off than you were at this time last year?
Over the past year	better off											25	26	27	25	26	28	23	26	27	27	29	31
	worse off											38	41	37	42	40	36	37	37	36	36	35	34
QUESTION 1 difference												-13	-15	-10	-17	-14	-8	-14	-11	-9	-9	-6	-3
Q2 This time next year, do you and your family expect to be better-off financially or worse off than you are now?
	better off											38	34	34	32	34	37	32	37	36	34	38	37
	worse off											22	23	24	27	25	20	23	23	20	20	19	20
QUESTION 2 difference												16	11	10	5	9	17	9	14	16	14	19	17
Q3 Thinking of economic conditions in Australia as a whole. In the next 12 months, do you expect we'll have good times financially, bad times or some good and some bad?
	good times											19	14	15	14	14	19	16	17	18	18	16	16
	bad times											44	49	48	54	51	49	50	49	47	46	46	48
QUESTION 3 difference												-25	-35	-33	-40	-37	-33	-34	-32	-29	-28	-30	-32
Q4 Looking ahead, what would you say is more likely, that in Australia as a whole, we'll have continuous good times during the next five years of so - or we'll have bad times - or some good and some bad?
	good times											28	28	27	28	30	30	26	30	31	29	30	33
	bad times											22	26	26	28	25	21	26	22	23	22	22	19
QUESTION 4 difference												6	2	1	0	5	9	0	8	8	7	8	14
Q5 Generally, do you think now is a good time - or a bad time - for people to buy major household items?
	good time to buy											29	26	30	28	31	33	33	33	39	40	43	46
	bad time to buy											40	43	45	40	43	39	37	37	36	33	34	26
QUESTION 5 difference												-11	-17	-15	-12	-12	-6	-4	-4	3	7	9	20
Weekly Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating												94.2	89.5	90.7	87.3	90.3	95.8	91.2	94.9	97.8	98.4	99.9	103.0
* The Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating is 100.0 plus the simple unweighted average of the difference between the percentage of respondents who give a favourable and those who give unfavourable answers to five key questions.

© 2012 Roy Morgan Research. All Rights Reserved
privacy-statement