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The economy, without the jargon

You don’t need an economics degree to follow how the country is going. Each of these takes two or three minutes and lets you move the numbers yourself.

Interactive · 3 min

Your tax receipt

How much tax do you pay, and where does it go?

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Interactive · 2 min

Deficit or debt?

They’re not the same thing. What’s the difference?

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Interactive · 2 min

Inflation and your pay

Why can a pay rise still leave you worse off?

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Interactive · 2 min

Interest rates and mortgages

Who decides your mortgage rate, and what does a rate rise really cost?

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Plain-English glossary

Every measure on the site comes with a short explanation of what it is and why it matters.

Inflation: Inflation is how fast prices are rising across a typical basket of goods and services: food, rent, petrol, power, insurance and more. The ABS measures it with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and this figure compares prices with the same quarter a year earlier.
Prices vs wages since the election: This compares how much the prices of everyday essentials have risen since mid-2022 with how much wages have risen. Wages are measured by the ABS Wage Price Index, which tracks pay for the same jobs over time.
Real wages: private vs public sector: 'Real' wages are wages adjusted for inflation: what your pay can actually buy. We divide the Wage Price Index by the Consumer Price Index and set mid-2022 to 100. Below 100 means pay buys less than it did then. Private-sector and public-sector workers are shown separately.
Mortgage interest and income tax: The share of all household income, before tax, that goes on interest on home loans, and the share that goes on income tax. The ABS measures both in the national accounts every quarter, back to 1959.
Fuel prices: Petrol and diesel prices as measured in the Consumer Price Index. The headline compares the latest month with the same month a year earlier.
Electricity prices: The change in household electricity prices recorded in the Consumer Price Index since the June quarter 2022, shown next to overall inflation. The ABS counts government bill rebates as a price reduction while they are paid.
Power bills: the $275 promise: Each year energy regulators set a 'default offer', a maximum price for households on standard electricity contracts, based on typical usage in each region. It is the most consistent official yardstick for what a typical power bill costs.
Wholesale gas prices: The average price of gas traded in east-coast wholesale markets, in dollars per gigajoule. It is a key input cost for manufacturers, gas-fired power stations and household gas bills.
Emissions target: Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions compared with 2005 levels, from the official national inventory. The Climate Change Act 2022 sets a target of a 43% reduction by 2030.
Mortgage costs: The average interest rate on existing variable home loans for owner-occupiers (RBA data), and what that means in monthly repayments on a typical $600,000, 30-year loan compared with May 2022.
Interest rate rises: The cash rate is the Reserve Bank's official interest rate. Banks base their lending rates on it. This counts every decision to raise or cut it since the government was sworn in on 23 May 2022.
Housing Accord: 1.2 million homes: Under the National Housing Accord, federal and state governments committed to 1.2 million new homes in the five years from 1 July 2024. That is 60,000 a quarter. We add up ABS new dwelling completions since then.
Home prices: The ABS calculates the average price of a residential dwelling by dividing the total value of all homes by the number of homes. We compare its growth since mid-2022 with wage growth.
New residents per new home: How much Australia's population grew over the past year, divided by the number of new homes finished in the same year.
Rents vs wages: Rents from the Consumer Price Index and pay from the Wage Price Index, both set to 100 in the June quarter 2022, so you can see which has risen faster since.
Home prices vs earnings: The average value of a home in Australia divided by average full-time annual pay before tax. The answer is how many years of full pay the average home costs.
Unemployment: The share of people in the labour force (working or actively looking for work) who do not have a job, from the ABS Labour Force Survey of about 50,000 people each month. Seasonally adjusted.
Public vs private sector jobs: The ABS Labour Account counts filled jobs and classifies each employer as public sector (federal, state and local government and government-owned businesses) or private sector. This compares how fast each has grown since mid-2022.
Who is creating the jobs?: Change in filled jobs in each of the 19 major industries since mid-2022. Health care & social assistance (which includes NDIS and aged care), education, and public administration are highlighted. Economists call these the 'non-market' sector because they are mostly paid for by government.
Productivity: Labour productivity is how much the economy produces for each hour worked, measured here for the non-farm economy in the ABS national accounts. We compare average annual growth since mid-2022 with the 2000-2019 average.
Business collapses: The number of companies entering formal insolvency (administration, liquidation or receivership) for the first time each year, as recorded by the corporate regulator ASIC.
Consumer confidence: The Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey asks around 1,200 Australian adults each month how they feel about their family finances and the economy. 100 means optimists and pessimists are evenly balanced. Below 100 means pessimists outnumber optimists.
GDP per capita vs total GDP: Gross domestic product (the total value of everything the economy produces), adjusted for inflation and divided by the population. This figure is the change over the past year.
Household income per person: Real household disposable income is the income households have left after income tax and interest payments, adjusted for inflation. We divide it by the population and set mid-2022 to 100.
Living standards by decade: The average yearly growth in real national income per person in each decade since the 1970s. Real means after inflation; per person means it allows for population growth.
GP bulk billing: The share of GP visits where the doctor bills Medicare directly, so the patient pays nothing out of pocket.
Size of government in the economy: Public demand is spending and investment by federal, state and local governments (such as salaries, services, infrastructure and defence) as a share of total economic output, from the ABS national accounts.
Tax take: All tax collected by the Commonwealth (income tax, company tax, GST and the rest) as a share of the whole economy, from the historical tables published with each Budget.
Gross government debt: Gross debt is the face value of all bonds and Treasury notes the Commonwealth has issued and not yet repaid: the amount it must pay back to investors when they mature. It is a snapshot at 30 June each year. Net debt, a separate measure, subtracts certain financial assets the government holds.
Budget deficits: The underlying cash balance is the Commonwealth's headline budget result: cash receipts minus cash payments, excluding the Future Fund's investment earnings. A negative number is a deficit.
Interest on government debt: The interest the Commonwealth pays each year to the investors who hold its bonds. It rises when debt grows and when interest rates on new borrowing are higher.
Government spending (share of GDP): Total Commonwealth cash payments (welfare, health, defence, grants to the states, interest and so on) as a share of Australia's GDP. Tax receipts are shown for comparison.
Size of the public service: The Australian Public Service is the federal bureaucracy: departments and agencies such as Services Australia, the ATO and Home Affairs. It does not include the military, state public servants, or staff of government businesses.
NDIS cost growth: The National Disability Insurance Scheme funds support for Australians with permanent and significant disability. It is jointly funded by the Commonwealth and the states and is now one of the largest items in the Budget.
Net overseas migration: Net overseas migration is the number of people arriving to live in Australia (for at least 12 of the next 16 months), minus residents leaving on the same basis. It includes students, workers and permanent migrants. ABS data, summed over the latest 12 months.
Defence spending: How much the Commonwealth spends on the Australian Defence Force and the Department of Defence, as a share of the economy. Figures vary by method: the 'NATO approach' counts extra items such as some veterans' and security spending.
Laws passed: The number of Acts, laws passed by both houses of Parliament and given Royal Assent, in each term of Parliament.
Who pays the income tax: Everyone who paid income tax in a year, lined up from the lowest taxable income to the highest and split into groups. The chart shows what share of the total tax bill each group paid.
Money sent overseas by individuals: Personal transfers are money or goods sent by people living in Australia to people overseas without anything in return, mostly to family. The ABS estimates them as part of the balance of payments.
Spending on consultants: A consultancy is a contract for independent expert advice, such as a review, an evaluation or a strategy, where the work reflects the consultant's own judgement. Agencies flag these contracts when they publish them on AusTender, the government's contract register. This chart adds up the value of every flagged contract by the year it starts.