Australia Business Confidence

Last Release

Dec 31, 2024

Actual

-2

Units In

Points

-3

Frequency

Monthly

Next Release

Feb 13, 2025

Time to Release

13 Days 16 Hours

Highest	Lowest	Average	Date Range	Source
23 Apr 2021	-66 Mar 2020	4.86 Points	1997-2024	National Australia Bank

The NAB monthly survey of business confidence is based on a telephone survey of around 600 small, medium and large size non-agricultural companies. The Survey measures the expectations of business conditions for the upcoming month and is a simple average of trading, profitability and employment indices, reported by respondents for their company. The indices are calculated by taking the difference between the percentage of respondents nominating good or very good, or a rise and those nominating poor or very poor, or a fall.

Latest Updates

Australia’s NAB business confidence index inched up to -2 in December 2024 from -3 in the prior month despite marking the second straight month of negative prints. Meanwhile, business conditions surged (6 vs 3 in November), boosted by strong sales (9 vs 6) and profitability (4 vs 0) during the year-end, along with a slight rise in employment (4 vs 3). Conditions improved in all industries except transport and utilities, construction, and wholesale. There was a notable rise in retail, growing for the first time since November 2023. Forward orders gained (-2 vs -5), with capex being flat (at 11) and capacity utilization up (82.8% vs 82.4%). Purchase cost growth rose again to 1.5% in quarterly equivalent terms, while labor cost growth edged down to 1.4%. Product price growth rose to 0.9% from 0.6%, and retail price growth added to 0.7%. "The survey continues to show some resilience in activity but also...a challenging cost environment," said NAB chief economist Alan Oster.