The release of the latest GDP figures brought good news. As expected, the economy grew strongly and rather more unexpectedly, the national income also took a sharp jump. But rather than any great investment or government initiative, this jump was due to a large revision by the Bureau of Statistics – and it is a revision that certainly was not observed among workers, whose wages and hours worked continued to stagnate.

For the past few years, as the economy transitioned out of the mining boom, economists and policy makers have been worried about the lack of income growth. The ABS’s measure of economic wellbeing, “real net national disposable income,” had declined for six straight quarters from September 2014. In March, the run of declines ended with a laughably small increase of 0.03%, and the annual growth was still falling by 1.1%.

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Well, worry no more!

In the latest figures released on Wednesday, the ABS revised the figures, taking into account a change in the calculation of “primary income credits from non-residents.”

The net result was that in March the ABS found $4.8bn in income down the back of the couch that we didn’t know about:

It meant that instead of falling by 1.1% in March, Australia’s economic wellbeing was actually growing by 0.4% and in June the growth is now up to 2.1% – the best for four years:

It’s a fairly massive revision – one that doesn’t leave you with a lot of confidence.

It isn’t helped by some oddities in the latest seasonally adjusted GDP figures. The figures estimated that Australia’s economy grew by 0.5% off the back of a surge in public investment and spending, which more than made up for a fall in net exports and private investment.

Praise be to government spending!

While the figures demonstrate the impact of public spending they also highlight the dangers of relying on seasonally adjusted figures, because they really look a tad fishy when subjected to close inspection.

In seasonally adjusted terms, public investment contributed 0.65% points to quarterly growth – that is larger than the actual 0.5% growth in the overall economy. In effect if you took away that government investment, the economy would have gone backwards:

But while around a fifth of that public investment came from the federal government, mostly via the purchase of Chinook helicopters, the big chunk came from the states and local government – especially Victoria and Western Australia.

Without getting too deeply into the weeds, in Victoria, state and local government investment apparently grew in the June quarter by 59.6% – the biggest jump on record:

In Western Australia, the increase was 43.8% – another record.

Two states with record public investment growth in the same month? Sorry, I don’t buy it.

So let us instead look at the trend figures, which at least make a bit more sense.

And in trend terms the news was still good – the economy grew by 0.7% in the June quarter (actually better than the seasonally adjusted figure) and by 3.1% over the past year – the best annual growth since September 2012:

The story is also good on the nominal GDP front – although that is a relative term – the 2.8% annual growth is the best since June 2014, but remains pathetically below the 25-year average of 5.7%.

And while the trend is going in the right direction, it’s still a long way from achieving the 4.5% growth estimated for 2016-17 in the May budget.

In trend terms, the biggest driver of growth in the quarter is household consumption. Public investment slips back to being the fourth most important, and net exports goes from being a negative to a positive:

As I have noted in the past, one of the problems with being dependent upon exports for economic growth is that net exports (exports minus imports) jump around a bit in the seasonally adjusted terms.

At 1.7 percentage points, net exports contributed just half of total growth in the past year.

The contribution of household spending also remains a big driver – almost as important as net exports – but in June, household consumption grew by just 0.6% in trend terms, the smallest increase for three years.

Such a slowing replicates the weak retail trade figures out last week:

The annual growth of household spending remains fairly stable but a look at what is driving the growth suggests we’re not spending so much due to a joy in our step, but because the bills need to be paid.

While the big jump in spending over the past year was for clothing at 7.2%, it was not the biggest contributor to the growth in our spending. That title goes to rent and other dwelling services, followed by insurance and financial services, which together accounted for nearly a third of all our increase in spending.

It’s not all bad though – our spending on recreation and culture was up a solid 3.5% and was the fourth biggest contributor to the growth of spending:

We are still purchasing houses at a strong clip, but even that does seem to be coming off the boil a bit:

One thing that also remains largely unchanged is the weak growth in labour costs and the incomes going to employees.

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In the past year, the cost of labour actually fell, and the overall compensation of employees grew at just 3.2% – reflecting the record low wages growth and a fall in the number of hours worked:

But the drop in hours worked combined with an increase in GDP meant there was a strong jump in labour productivity, and it continued the now more than four-year run of productivity growth:

To an extent, the GDP figures are a bit of “same old story”.

The overall growth is good – 3.1% is something you’d never turn down. But the growth remains largely off the back of exports from low labour-intensive industries and also from increased spending in areas like rent and insurance that most people would not consider as being all that wonderful – especially at a time when wages are flat-lining.

We will have to wait to see if the new-found jump in national income translates into something employees also come to experience.