Australian retail trade trending up nicely: Pete Wargent
A decent result for Retail Trade, which increased by 0.4% to a fresh high of $24.77 billion in November. Trend retail trade has increased nicely from $21.7 billion at the end of 2012 to $24.7 billion.
Over the past 18 months total industry retail turnover has declined only once, in July last year.
Year-on-year retail turnover growth improved to 4.3%, which is well ahead of the 5 year average of 3.4%.
State versus state
The long run data suggests that retail activity has largely followed house price growth, implying in turn that the economy probably needs dwelling prices to continue rising if household consumption is not to stall.
Although household goods retail has picked up strongly of late, department stores have struggled to main market share as online retail has taken hold.
Household goods retail turnover has led the way for some time now, with an impressive 6.6 per cent growth over the year to November.
Perhaps surprisingly the slowest annual growth was seen in the food retailing space, while department stores saw turnover slip in the month of November.
PETE WARGENT is the co-founder of AllenWargent property buyers (London, Sydney) and a best-selling author and blogger.
His latest book is Four Green Houses and a Red Hotel.
