Australian retailers have seen a slight fall in overall turnover in December last year, down 0.6 per cent on the prior month.
This is according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which shows that the 0.6 per cent monthly fall in December 2024 is similar to a 3.2 per cent fall in December 2023 compared to the prior month then, with movement since then swinging between low positive growth to low negative growth.
Despite the slip month-on-month, retail turnover lifted by 1.2 per cent from December 2023 to December 2024.
Meanwhile, wholesale trade was relatively flat at a 0.1 per cent decline, and lifting 4.2 per cent year-on-year.
These slips joined four other industries recording drops across the entire 13-industry aggregate, with total business turnover across Australia lifting 0.4 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms and 0.3 per cent in trend terms.
Business turnover for the Electricity, gas, water and waste services industry saw the strongest rise month-on-month of 12.9 per cent in December, and 21.6 per cent year-on-year.
“Turnover in the Electricity supply subdivision grew 12.2 per cent as coal power plant outages and high temperatures on the east coast put more pressure on electricity supply,” ABS head of business statistics Robert Ewing said.
“The turnover index for this subdivision is now only 3.6 points short of the record high reported in August 2022.
Other notable industry rises were in Accommodation and food services, which was up 1.9 per cent, and Information media and telecommunications, which rose 1.4 per cent.
Growth in these industries were partially offset by drops in six of the 13 industries.
“The largest falls were in Administrative and support services, down 3.0 per cent, and Manufacturing, down 1.9 per cent,” Mr Ewing said.
In year-on-year terms, turnover was higher for 11 of the 13 industries included in the indicator.
The industries that saw the biggest annual rises were Electricity, gas, water and waste services, Information media and telecommunications (up 10.1 per cent), and Transport, postal and warehousing (up 7.7 per cent).
The only industry with an annual fall was Mining (down 8.5 per cent).