While COVID-19 has been a traumatic experience for everyone and has damaged economic activity, it has nonetheless been a catalyst for some positive and long-lasting impacts on businesses.
Despite the challenges, it is encouraging to see a generally upbeat mood among the CEOs, CFOs and directors surveyed in terms of prospects for the next few years.
The latest GDP results shows the national economy screeched to halt in the June quarter of 2020, declining 7 percent from the previous quarter, to be down 0.2 percent year on year.
Among the myriad reasons to hope for a vaccine for COVID-19 is that an ongoing shortfall in skilled immigration will significantly damage Australia’s medium-term economic fortunes.
Dr Brendan Rynne, KPMG Chief Economist, responds to RBA economic forecast Following detailed analysis of the Victoria stage 4 lockdown, KPMG has reviewed its central case scenario for the outlook…
The figures may err slightly on the pessimistic side – while everything depends on the health outcomes, the Australian economy does have a natural resilience, which we saw with 330,000 jobs being created between the low of early April and the end of the June quarter.
For years, KPMG has been advocating a rise in the level of Newstart, and the new JobSeeker level is still a healthy rise on that, which is socially and economically justified.
It is no surprise 40 percent of Australian’s consider themselves financially constrained due to the impact of the pandemic, with ramifications in consumer spending habits for the foreseeable future.
While these are a “beautiful set of numbers” we already know this rebound in employment is not likely to last into July because of the re-imposition of lockdown restrictions in Melbourne
