Business Indicators, Australia

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Quarterly estimates of private sector sales, wages, profits and inventories

Reference period
June 2024
Released
2/09/2024

Key statistics

Seasonally adjusted, current price estimates for:

  • Company gross operating profits fell 5.3%
  • Wages and salaries rose 0.7%

Seasonally adjusted, chain volume estimate for:

  • Inventories rose 0.1%
Key data items
 Mar Qtr 24 to Jun Qtr 24 (%)Jun Qtr 23 to Jun Qtr 24 (%)
Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)  
 Manufacturing  
  Trend-0.1-0.3
  Seasonally Adjusted0.30.7
 Wholesale trade  
  Trend-1.3-5.2
  Seasonally Adjusted-1.9-5.4
Inventories (Chain volume measures)  
  Trend0.30.6
  Seasonally Adjusted0.11.5
Company gross operating profits  
  Trend-1.8-3.7
  Seasonally Adjusted-5.3-3.9
Wages and salaries  
  Seasonally Adjusted0.75.3

Inventories

Company gross operating profits

Notes on release

Reinstatement of trend estimates

The trend estimates attempt to measure underlying behaviour in business activity. Due to the disruption to regular patterns in business activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ABS suspended Business Indicators trend estimates from June quarter 2019 onwards. 

In recent quarters, time series have reverted to more usual seasonal patterns, and it was assessed that the impacts of COVID-19 are no longer driving volatility in the data. The trend estimates have now been reinstated in this release. 

Due to the degree of disruption caused by COVID-19, the ABS will not publish trend estimates for all series from March quarter 2020 to September quarter 2022 (inclusive), as estimates are likely to be misleading for users throughout the pandemic period. 

Comparison between company gross operating profits and gross operating surplus

Valuation changes have had an impact on the value of inventories held by Australian businesses this quarter. An Inventories Valuation Adjustment (IVA) is applied in the calculation of the Gross Operating Surplus of private non-financial corporations (GOS) estimate in the Australian National Accounts. The IVA for the June quarter 2024 is -$717m which is $203m lower than the March quarter 2024 IVA of -$514m.

No adjustment is made to the Company Gross Operating Profits (CGOP) estimate in this publication and, as a result, users should exercise caution when comparing CGOP and GOS. It should be noted that there are other differences between the two series. In particular, changes are made to GOS when annual benchmarks are applied, and slightly different seasonal factors apply to the two series. Given this, while CGOP movements are an appropriate indicator for GOS, the two series will not have equivalent seasonally adjusted movements from quarter to quarter.

Analysis by industry

​​​​​​​Featured series

The following graphs and commentary refer to seasonally adjusted estimates for sales of goods and services and inventories in volume terms, and wages and salaries and company gross operating profits in current price terms. 

Total all industries

Mining

Manufacturing

Electricity, gas, water and waste services

Construction

Wholesale trade

Retail trade

Accommodation and food services

Transport, postal and warehousing

Information media and telecommunications

Financial and insurance services

Rental, hiring and real estate services

Professional, scientific and technical services

Administrative and support services

Education and training

Health care and social assistance

Arts and recreation services

Other services

Data downloads

Time series spreadsheets

Data files

Data Explorer datasets

Caution: Data in Data Explorer is currently released after the 11:30am release on the ABS website. Please check the reference period when using Data Explorer.

Business Indicators  - Quarterly estimates of private sector sales, wages, profits and inventories

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 5676.0.

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