MasterCard believes that confidence in the jobs market will likely drive further expansion in the economy in the first half of 2016, as reported by SBS.
Survey says that solid gross domestic product domestic product and jobs growth in the second half of last year will likely roll into this year. The MasterCard Consumer Confidence index rose 2.9 points to 42.4 points in the second half of 2015 alone, with the highest level since the second half of the year 2013.
Saul Eslake, an economist, said that the results aligned to the improvement tone of the Australian economy over the same period, indicating that a solid growth and progression will continue in the first half of 2016. "The pickup in the pace of overall economic growth in the second half of last year should be sustained throughout the first half of the year 2016," Eslake stated. He also said that the main driver of confidence was the labour market's improvement.
Being the highest level since the second half of 2013, the index measure of consumers' perceptions of employment has risen by 7.4 points to 39. "The latest result points to further job gains," Eslake added. The index also showed that women had a more pessimistic way of looking at things compared to men, and has since been continuing the trend of the past decade, according to news.com.au.
Survey respondents who are 30-years-old and below had the biggest improvement with their self-confidence, up 12.7 points to 59.9, while the survey respondents ranging from the age of 30 to 44 has dropped 6.1 points to 39.3. Meanwhile, people aged over 45 were still labelled as the most pessimistic of all the age brackets, with their confidence rising only 1.0 point to 28.2 in the second half of this year.
"Perhaps they simply had less time to become worried about things that concern older generations ," Eslake said.
