Gross Domestic Product QoQ

Gross Domestic Product QoQ tracks quarter on quarter change in Australia's real output in chain volume terms. It covers all resident producers and final spending in Australia's economic territory, with state and industry detail in the release and a national headline. Headline GDP(A), where A means average, averages expenditure, income and production estimates, published in the June quarter 1990 and official since the December quarter 1991. The quarterly series runs back to the September quarter 1959, and the indicator does not measure welfare, disposable income, output per person or cash totals.

The accounts are compiled after quarter end from partial indicators and administrative data, finalised about two months later. Results appear on the first Wednesday of March, June, September and December at 11:30am Canberra time, about 10 to 12 weeks after quarter end. December and March releases carry AEDT while June and September carry AEST, and each release prints full spending, income, production, sector, productivity and saving tables. Most figures revise with better data and annual rebalancing, with no official threshold; two straight falls are only what markets call a technical recession.

Six spending parts drive growth, and imports subtract in the identity.

• Household final consumption expenditure: spending by resident households, usually the largest driver.
• General government final consumption expenditure: government spending on goods and services for households and community, often moving against the cycle.
• Private gross fixed capital formation: investment in dwellings, non-dwelling construction, machinery, intellectual property, cultivated resources and ownership transfer costs.
• Public gross fixed capital formation: general government plus public corporation investment.
• Changes in inventories: stock building or rundown, often the swing item in growth.
• Exports less imports: exports add to GDP while imports subtract, so falling imports lift growth arithmetically.

The June quarter 2020, released 2 September 2020, fell 7.0% QoQ and 6.3% through the year after a 0.3% fall in March quarter 2020. It was the record quarterly fall, led by household spending down 12.1% for 6.7 points, with services down 17.6% and discretionary down 25.0%. Private investment subtracted 1.2 points, inventories 0.6 points and exports 1.4 points, while government spending rose 2.9% to add 0.6 points. Imports fell 12.9% to add 2.5 points because imports subtract, and the saving ratio jumped to 19.8% from 6.0%.

1. Compilation and expenditure: compile expenditure, income and production GDP separately in chain volume terms. Add consumption, investment and inventories plus exports minus imports.
2. Income and production: sum wages, profits, mixed income and taxes less subsidies for income. Add industry value added plus product taxes less subsidies for production.
3. Chain volumes: value each component at prior financial year average prices, link forward and benchmark quarters to annuals, updating the reference year.
4. Headline average: headline GDP(A) averages the 3 estimates in chain volume terms. For example, 552.0, 550.2 and 551.4 give 551.2, up 0.4% from 549.0.
5. Current prices: multiply the average volume by the expenditure price index to get cash values.
6. Growth and contributions: multiply 100 by the change in average GDP over the prior quarter on seasonally adjusted chain volume. Weight each component by its prior nominal share. For example, 0.4% consumption growth at 55% weight adds about 0.2 points. Through the year growth uses the same quarter of the prior year.
7. Henderson trend: build seasonally adjusted chain volumes from prior year prices benchmarked to annuals. Extract trend with a centred 7-term Henderson average, asymmetric for the latest 3 quarters.