WA Economic Profile for October 2016

 

Gross state product

• Western Australia’s gross state product (GSP) was $240 billion in 2015-16, 15% of Australia’s gross domestic product.
• GSP per capita was $92,056, 33% above the national average of $69,134.
• Real GSP rose 1.9% in 2015-16, below annual average growth of 5.0% over the past ten years.
• Merchandise exports made the largest contribution to real GSP growth in 2015‑16, up 6%.
• Real business investment fell 17% in 2015-16.
• Mining was the largest industry contributing to real GSP growth in 2015‑16, up 7%.

Labour market

• Western Australia’s employment rose by 6,800 to 1.33 million in October 2016.
• Western Australia’s unemployment rate was 6.5% in October 2016, above the 6.1% in the previous month and 6.3% a year ago.

Services exports

• Western Australia’s services exports rose 4% to $6.6 billion in 2015-16, mainly from increases in personal travel (up 10%) and education travel (up 8%). Business travel fell 14% in 2015-16.

Commodity prices

• In October 2016, the monthly average price of:
• iron ore rose 2 per cent to US$59.0 a tonne
• LNG rose 2 per cent to US$6.4 a million British thermal unit
• crude oil rose 10 per cent to US$49.9 a barrel
• gold fell 4.5 per cent to US$1,266 an ounce
• The Reserve Bank of Australia’s monthly index of rural commodity prices rose 1 per cent in October 2016.

Changes to note

• The ABS reallocated some of Western Australia’s gold exports from China to Hong Kong in 2015-16 (and back to January 2012) because they discovered a large amount of gold was being retained in Hong Kong whereas it was previously thought to have been re-exported to China (see page 5).
• Western Australia’s natural gas reserves/resources data has changed since the September 2016 edition due to the inclusion of gas fields in Commonwealth waters off the Western Australian and Northern Territory coast. Previously, these data pertained to gas fields onshore in Western Australia and in Western Australian waters only (see page 9).

For the full Economic Profile for November 2016, please click.