Roy Morgan Update July 8, 2025: Consumer Confidence, Inflation Expectations and Business Confidence

In this week's Market Research Update, we present the latest data on Consumer Confidence, Inflation Expectations and Business Confidence.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan update.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly update.

I’m Julian McCrann, the Manager of the Roy Morgan Poll, stepping in today for Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine who is unavailable, to deliver the Weekly Update.

All eyes have been on today’s Reserve Bank meeting at which the Bank delivered a shock – leaving interest rates on hold at 3.85%.

In the lead up to today’s decision, Consumers have clearly been expecting a cut with Consumer confidence increasing for a third straight week.

The Bank’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged will be a shock to many going forward. The latest ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence based on interviews conducted throughout last week – before the Reserve Bank meeting – increased 1.4 points to 88.6.

Although net buying sentiment fell back this week after the Mid-Year Sales ended, there were positive moves in relation to personal finances and expectations for the Australian economy which improved and led the overall index up.

However, today’s decision by the RBA to leave interest rates unchanged is likely to be a significant negative to next week’s Consumer Confidence reading as the Bank waits to see the latest inflation data later this month for the June Quarter.

There was concerning news on the inflation front this week – before the Reserve Bank meeting – with ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation expectations increasing 0.3% to 5%.

Australians expectations of inflation are now substantially higher than the official ABS figure which shows annual inflation at only 2.1%.

Australians now expect inflation of 5% over each of the next two years – a figure just above the long-term average of 4.8% for this measure over the last 15 years.

Concerningly, the biggest increase was for People Paying Off Their Home – their Inflation Expectations jumped by 0.9% points to 5.2%.

Now just behind the Inflation Expectations of Renters on 5.3%. Home Owners have the lowest Inflation Expectations of 4.5%.

And now, how are businesses feeling. Australian Business Confidence for the month of June increased by 2.8 points to 102.4 – just above the neutral level of 100.

The increase to Business Confidence came after the Albanese Government’s decisive re-election victory in May, and after the Reserve Bank decided to cut interest rates later in the month.

And of course, these interviews were conducted before the Reserve Bank’s decision today.

This Roy Morgan Business Confidence series is based on interviews with 1,500 businesses each month to gauge their views on their company’s prospects as well as their assessment of the broader Australian economy.

Driving Business Confidence higher in June was more confidence about the year ahead.

Now 39.6% of businesses – an increase of 7.3% points on a month ago – expect to be ‘better off financially’ this time next year. Only 21.7% expect to be ‘worse off’ – a net positive of around 18% points on this key question.

In addition, now a rising majority of 59.2% of businesses expect ‘good times’ for the Australian economy over the next 12 months while only 36.7% expect ‘bad times’ – a net positive result of over 20% points.

These are the two questions which provided a boost to Business Confidence in June.

Over the two months of May and June, the most confident industries were:

• Public Administration & Safety which recorded a Business Confidence of 130.9, Accommodation & Food Services 128.6,
• Electricity, gas, water & waste services on 116.0 and Rental, Hiring & Real Estate Services on 110.0 – all well above the national average.

At the other end of the scale, we once again have the Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing industry with Business Confidence of only 63.0 – well below any other industry.

And now to some important Roy Morgan data looking at long-term smoking trends in Australians over the decade to June 2025.

The latest data from Roy Morgan shows that 17.4% of Australians aged 18+ smoke or vape, including 12.1% smoking Factory-Made-Cigarettes (FMCs) or Roll-Your-Own (RYO) Cigarettes and 7.5% vape.

Overall, this is virtually unchanged over the last decade – in 2014, 17.7% smoked either FMCs, RYO, pipe or cigars.

However, since 2014, the composition of smoking or vaping has changed with both vaping and illicit tobacco more widespread.

Today 7.5% vape and 4.8% report using illicit tobacco.

Smoking illicit tobacco is clearly contributing to the continued overall smoking rate now hovering just over 12%.

For more detail head over to the Roy Morgan website for an in-depth look at smoking and vaping rates in Australia over the last decade.

And finally today a look at superannuation satisfaction.

In recent months overall satisfaction with the financial performance of super funds has increased to 69.9% - an increase of 3.1% points from a year ago and up 4.9% points from the post-pandemic low reached in July 2023 of 65%.

Satisfaction with super funds is now over 10% points higher than the long-run average of 59% since 2007.