Roy Morgan Update August 19, 2025: Working From Home, Consumer Confidence and Australian Readership

In this week's Market Research Update, we present the latest data on Consumer Confidence, Australian Readership and Working From Home.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly update.

Today we have Australians’ initial reaction to the Reserve Bank’s decision to cut interest rates last week, but first the big issue of working from home – who would have thought it would be so political and so divisive.

Today marks the first day of the Albanese Government’s Economic Reform Roundtable looking at how Australia can improve its economic productivity.

At a political level, the issue of ‘Working From Home’ has been incredibly contentious.

Many analysts blamed the Coalition’s policy on banning ‘Working From Home’ for public servants – and subsequent back-flip, as a key reason for the party’s election defeat.

But the evidence shows it’s nowhere near that simple. Roy Morgan has been measuring ‘Work From Home’ since the COVID pandemic in 2020.

The latest Roy Morgan research shows that nationwide, 46% of people, or 47% of voters, around 5.9 million employed Australians, work from home at least some of the time, but this flexibility is concentrated in just 45 electorates.

In the remaining 105 seats, the majority of employed voters do not work from home.

Interestingly, the top five electorates where over 60% of workers ‘work from home’ include 3 Labor seats (Grayndler – the seat of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Sydney and Bennelong – all in Inner City Sydney) and 2 Teal held-seats (Wentworth in Sydney and Kooyong in Melbourne).

On the other hand, all five the electorates with the lowest rates of ‘working from home’ are located in rural and regional Australia and include the National-held seats of Gippsland and Mallee in Victoria, the Liberal-held seats of Forrest and Durack in Western Australia, and the Labor seat of Lingiari in the Northern Territory.

Well over two-thirds of workers in these five electorates don’t do any ‘work from home’.

For more detail on the in-depth study of Working From Home visit the Roy Morgan website.

Back to the immediate reaction of Australians to last week’s Reserve Bank cut to interest rates.

Consumer Confidence was virtually unchanged at 89.4.

The decision was widely expected in recent weeks and in early August the index breached the mark of 90 for the first time in over three years.

Although the initial reaction to the interest rate cut has been subdued, as the rate cut flows through to consumers over the next few weeks this should provide a boost to Consumer Confidence.

However, underneath the surface, the interest rate cut did have a predictable impact.

The Consumer Confidence for People Paying Off Their Home increased by 2.1 points to 90.6 this week.

The Consumer Confidence of this group has increased every time the Reserve Bank has cut interest rates so far this year by an average of 5 points.

The Consumer Confidence of Renters also increased this week, up 6.4 points to 88.2 – the biggest positive impact from the interest rate cut.

In contrast, the Consumer Confidence of Home Owners dropped 2.6 points this week. The Consumer Confidence of this group has dropped in all three weeks the Reserve Bank has cut interest rates so far this year by an average of 2.6 points.

Home Owners are generally older than mortgage holders and renters, and are more likely to benefit from higher interest rates on their savings.

There was good news in terms of Inflation Expectations. This week ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations dropped 0.1% to 4.9%.

This means Australians now expect inflation of 4.9% over each of the next two years.

And finally today to the latest Roy Morgan readership figures for the 12 months to June 2025 which show that NEWS continues to matter – to the vast majority of Australians.

98% of Australians, an estimated 22.4 million, consume news in any given month either in papers or digitally via online outlets or apps.

The most widely read category of news remains the ‘General News’ category with a unique audience (or read by) 22 million Australians – equivalent to 96% of the population.

Property continues to be highly popular with over two-thirds of Australians, 70%, turning to the Property section – the second most popular overall.

In third place is Sport, read by 13.5 million Australians – 59% of the population, followed by Entertainment & Culture on 12.2 million, Lifestyle & Health on 11.6 million, and Business and Finance read by 10.1 million.

A look at the top brands in news in Australia shows ABC News has the largest unique audience of 12.4 million Australians, just in front of news.com.au with a unique audience of 12 million – both reaching over 50% of the population.

Other widely read news brands include nine.com.au with an audience of 10.1 million, the Daily Mail with 8.3 million, 7News.com.au with 8.2 million, the Sydney Morning Herald with 8 million and The Guardian with 7.7 million – all reaching over 30% of Australians.

Turning to magazines, the latest Roy Morgan figures on Magazine readership released today show over 14.7 million Australians read magazines – either in print or online.

The two most widely read magazines are Coles Magazine, with a readership of 5 million Australians and Fresh Ideas (from Woolworths) with a readership of almost 4.5 million.

The most widely read paid magazines are Better Homes & Gardens with a readership of 1.7 million, The Australian Women’s Weekly with a readership of over 1.2 million and National Geographic with a readership of over 1 million.

For detailed information on the latest Roy Morgan readership figures, for magazines and newspapers, and the ThinkNewsBrands analysis visit the Roy Morgan website.