Average living costs for working Australians rose by just 0.1 per cent in the December quarter, but that overall number hides some bigger differences. According to the latest Analytical Living Cost Index (ALCI) from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the biggest rise was in communications costs, while the biggest fall was in food.
Picture by Andy Bullock
This is the percentage price change in categories the ABS tracks to calculate the ALCI for employee households. (It also calculates data for government welfare recipients, pensioners and retirees, but we’ve stuck with the main figures here.)
Health
Clothing and footwear
Transport
Education
Furnishings, household equipment and services
Housing
Insurance and financial services
Recreation and culture
Alcohol and tobacco
Communication
-1.1%
-0.7%
0%
0%
0.1%
0.5%
0.5%
0.7%
0.9%
1%
The ABS attributes the rise overall to “increases in domestic holiday travel and accommodation, rents and interest charges” (not all of which are broken out in the categories above). How do those changes match with your experience?
Noddy
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:09 PMYou Are Spending More On Phones, Less On Food
Erm, Actually no… no I am not!!
Dave
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:42 PMYou need to fix the formatting for those items. I presume it is meant to be in a table?
Angus Kidman
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:57 PMHmmm, it is in a table on my screen. What browser are you using?
Blake
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 2:50 PMIt’s not working on my mobile browser (dolphin, iphone4)
BlackBird
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:49 PMThe cost of good healthy food is acctually increasing, i dont know what the rest of the bloody planet is living on if they are spending less on food…
TSH
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:51 PMYep, I’d say that’s about accurate for me. In 2011 I reduced my spending on junk/fast food and for the first time bought a mobile phone outright. :–]
Labrys
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 2:15 PMSort of accurate.
Food spending has increased a bit because we have shifted to eating locally produced and sustainable / organic foods.
But phone spending decreased about 6 months ago when I got my new phone but went on a cheaper plan. :)
noko
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 4:23 PMI am so hungry…
Also pretty true in most tech products. I know a friend of mine would starved himself for a week and eating toasted bread and jam for 3 weeks just so he could buy an iPad 2.