Australians stop shopping

Australians have virtually stopped shopping.

Trend figures, just released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, show that  retail sales in August this year were just 3.2 per cent higher than those of the same month last year.

That suggests that sales have fallen, in real terms, over that time.

For the bureau’s figures also show that Australia’s inflation rose by 4.5 per cent, in the 12 months to the end of June.

OK.

The periods there don’t match.  At least not exactly.

But a closer look at the bureau’s retail sales figures, which are now produced only in trend terms, show growth of a bare 0.3 per cent a month, in  June, July and August.

Although price figures, for these three individual months  are not available, it’s a fair bet that retail sales are still slipping below current inflation.

That is, sales in real terms, are probably still contracting.

That’s hardly surprising.

The Prime Minister admits that Australian families, and pensioners in particular, have been doing it tough, over recent months.

Credit is tighter than it was a year ago.

And investors have suffered big slumps in share prices.

We are spending more on food and clothes.

But discretionary purchases are being cut back sharply.

Australia’s shopkeepers are not smiling quite so much, these days.