Australia Business Confidence

Last Release

Mar 31, 2024

Actual

Units In

Points

Frequency

Monthly

Next Release

May 13, 2024

Time to Release

1 Months 1 Days 14 Hours

Highest	Lowest	Average	Date Range	Source
23 Apr 2021	-66 Mar 2020	5.01 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 was up to 1 in March 2024 from 0 in the prior month. Figures stayed below its long-run average, with sentiment mainly improving in retail, construction, and transport. Meanwhile, business conditions were little changed (9 vs 10 in Feb), as sales (at 14) and employment (at 6) were steady while profitability fell (6 vs 10). Forward orders were less negative (-1 vs -3), and capacity utilization eased slightly (83.2% vs 83.4%). Labour cost growth dipped to 1.6% in quarterly equivalent terms from the prior 2.0%, and purchase cost growth slowed to 1.4% from 1.8%. Retail price growth edged down to 1.3% from 1.4%. “Cost pressures remain elevated but have eased a little more, but retail price growth remains elevated,” said NAB's chief economist Alan Oster. “Fundamentally, this aligns with our expectation that progress on bringing inflation back to target will be gradual, and we expect that to be further reinforced by Q1 CPI result in April.”