Timely data on new vehicle sales is available on a monthly basis. The latest data covers September 2022. We don’t
include vehicle sales in assessing overall economic performance as we assess other data on consumer spending.
But the data is worth noting.
In all of the states and territories, rolling annual new vehicle sales are below ‘normal’. Queensland is doing best with vehicle sales only down by 0.9 per cent on the decade average. Looking at the yearly change of the rolling annual sum of new vehicle sales, no economy recorded growth. Doing best is NSW, down 2.0 per cent on a year ago.
Tasmania leads the way again
For some time we have noted that there is little to separate the best performing states and territory economies. But the rankings were more defined in the current survey. Tasmania is back on top of the overall economic rankings with consistently high rankings across the eight indicators.
In the latest report, Tasmania bounced from third to first. While previous No.1, Victoria, fell from first to sixth.
Queensland lifted from fourth to second. The ACT fell from second spot to third. Western Australia improved from fifth to fourth. South Australia lifted from sixth position to fifth from Victoria, NSW and the Northern Territory.
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Where to from here?
Any of the top four economies could top the leader-board in the next survey. But momentum still lies with Queensland as per the previous two surveys. When looking at annual growth, Queensland had annual growth rates that exceeded the national average on five of the eight indicators.
Further, Queensland and the Northern Territory recorded the fastest annual growth rates on two indicators.
But also of note is the ACT, leading the overall performance rankings on three indicators.
In terms of future economic performance, much will depend on how economies support their consumers and businesses at a time of rising inflation rates and higher interest rates.
Originally published by Craig James, Chief Economist and Ryan Felsman, Senior Economist – CommSec
