Economic News

According to reports on 3 November, Thorburn's assessment came in a letter to the National Disability Insurance Agency in September, based on preliminary findings.

That gap between the four-year figure and the near-term figure will sit at the centre of the debate in the weeks before the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), which Treasury is due to release in December.

Buried in the forecast table of the November 2026 Statement onMonetary Policy(SMP) is a row that tells a sobering story for workers. The RBA now forecasts that the unemployment rate will rise in every half-year period it projects, reaching 5.1% by December 2028.

At first glance, the November decision looks like a puzzle. The Board's own statement acknowledged that "the unemployment rate is projected to rise by more than expected in the August forecasts". In the same statement, it announced an increase in the cash rate target …

Read quickly, two parts of the Reserve Bank's November messaging seem to pull in opposite directions. TheMonetary PolicyBoard's statement of 3 November 2026 says employment is still expected to keep growing. The same statement says "the unemployment rate is projected to rise by more …

That sentence, from Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser at a Citi conference fireside chat in Sydney on 21 October 2026, is about as plain a statement ofCentral Bankstrategy as Australians are likely to hear. Less than a fortnight later, on 3 November, theMonetary PolicyBoard lifted …

In 1974, average weeklyEarningsfor men grew by 25%. Inflation, which had been about 3% in 1969, climbed to more than 16% that year. For many Australians who lived through the period, those numbers still define what runaway inflation looks like.