The Reserve Bank of Australia is all-but-certain to raise interest rates on Tuesday to slow accelerating inflation, piling pressure on consumers who are among the most indebted in the world.
Swati Pandey
WA’s historic skills crunch shows no sign of abating with new analysis revealing there is more than one job vacancy for every unemployed West Aussie.
Cheyanne Enciso
The annual loss will likely reduce the average balanced superannuation fund by more than 3 per cent.
Sean Smith
The State Government hopes to triple the number of foreigners it sponsors to work in WA each year in response to a historic skills crunch, amid news there have never been more jobs up for grabs in Australia.
Josh Zimmerman
WA has won back its coveted triple-A credit rating, with global ratings agency S&P noting the State’s ‘continued budgetary outperformance compared with its domestic and global peers’.
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe says he cannot see a recession in Australia “on the horizon” but has flagged Australians should prepare for higher interest rates.
Adrian Lowe
More than 15,000 hotel and bottleshop workers have been told they will get a pay rise three months earlier than planned.
Economists hope Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe will use a speech on Tuesday to “level” with Australians and ease uncertainty that has seeped into discussion about the economy and interest rates.
Economists warn the chance of a 75 basis-point rate hike is growing on expectations the Reserve Bank’s official cash rate could reach more than 3 per cent within 18 months.
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe has defended comments he made suggesting interest rates would not rise until 2024, saying it was a “conditional statement” rather than a promise.
Another big bank has forecast interest rates to surge above 2 per cent by the end of this year, adding more pressure to already stretched WA small business operators.
Cheyanne Enciso and Adrian Lowe
People who made decisions last year based on explicit guidance from the Reserve Bank Governor that interest rates wouldn’t rise until at least 2024 might feel like victims of a bait and switch scam this week.
Stuart McKinnon
New forecasts from the Commonwealth Bank on Thursday suggest the RBA’s tightening will have an enormous impact on gross domestic product and the broader economy.
RBA leaders could consider speaking less given their “erratic” approach to interest rates is creating confusion, the head of economics at the nation’s biggest home lender says.
It feels like everything is costing a lot more these days, right? Economists have crunched the numbers and confirmed exactly that. Here’s where the money is going.
Rebecca Le May
Economists at NAB expect the official interest rate to pass 2 per cent by the end of the year after the RBA shocked the market with a 50 basis-point hike.
The WA conglomerate says it expects shoppers at its Bunnings, Target, Kmart and Officeworks chains to be become more value conscious.
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s $280 billion bond purchasing regime during the pandemic has been found to have had a detrimental effect on the market “for a time”.
The farm products supplier and livestock agency said sales were boosted by strong demand for fertilisers and crop protection.
WA’s near 14-year low unemployment rate is set to add pressure to businesses already battling the country’s highest inflation and lowest wages growth amid forecasts it could go even further.
Only 4000 more people were employed around Australia in April, as continued Omicron cases affect the number of people working reduced hours.
The biggest cut to real wages in more than two decades underscores the importance of reform to Australia’s industrial relations system and a focus on sustainable wages growth, economists say.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has used the largest decline in real wages in 22 years to underscore his attacks on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s economic credibility.
Adrian Lowe and Peter Law
A key piece of economic data looms as a key in the Reserve Bank’s decision on how much to raise official interest rates by next month, as economists tip a 0.4pc hike.
© West Australian Newspapers Limited 2022
