I took my children to the Sydney Royal Easter Show last weekend. It was as packed as I ever remember it.
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There were people everywhere, social distancing was absent and while there was hand sanitiser available everywhere, all the bottles were full and I did not see a single person use it.
You would be forgiven for believing that there was no pandemic. But the reality is that there is a deadly pandemic in full swing.
Beyond our shores, there are currently about 650,000 new infections a day and sadly 7000 to 10,000 deaths per day from COVID-19. The world is at the beginning of its fourth wave, and if the third wave was anything to go by, the fourth will be larger and more deadly than the third.
The Australian economy is behaving exactly the same as people at the Easter Show. Again, based on the numbers being churned out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), you could be forgiven for forgetting we are in the middle of a pandemic.
In economic terms, thankfully but puzzlingly, the numbers for the region provide a similar story to the crowds at the Easter Show. Let's do an around the grounds on the most important economic statistics.
ILLAWARRA REAL ESTATE
Last week CoreLogic released real estate price data for the first quarter of 2021, showing that Illawarra prices rose over six per cent in the first three months of the year. This was roughly the same as the price rise in Greater Sydney.
Frankly, these numbers are staggering. If you think about it, should prices keep increasing at this rate we would see Illawarra real estate prices rise by 24 per cent in simple terms this year.
In 2020 real estate prices in the region rose almost 10 per cent. Remember, it was the COVID year - with lockdowns, runs on toilet paper and children being schooled online at home. And that increase in the Illawarra was over three times the increase in Sydney, where real estate prices last year rose less than three per cent.
Certainly the Illawarra real estate market seems to have forgotten that the world in is in the grips of a pandemic.
UNEMPLOYMENT
The week before last, the ABS reported the latest unemployment rate for the Illawarra region. The numbers released showed unemployment in the Illawarra region for January and February averaged around five per cent.
In the June quarter last year unemployment in the region sky-rocketed to 7.5 per cent. That was the quarter when Australia closed its borders and the region went into lockdown.
Since then, unemployment has been trending down and the result for the first two months of 2021 suggest that unemployment has returned to 2019 levels.
But that figure - five per cent - is lower than the unemployment rate for the whole of NSW. While the Illawarra region's unemployment rate is affected by sampling error which makes it quite volatile, these numbers are a pleasant surprise and a step in the right direction.
Clearly, these numbers suggest that the labour markets that employ Illawarra residents also appear to have forgotten that the world is in the grips of a pandemic.
BUILDING APPROVALS
This brings me to the last of the hard pieces of data produced for the region. Building approvals are perhaps one of the most important pieces of data because construction that's approved today will be built over the next 18-24 months. This means that building approvals, unlike real estate indices and unemployment rates, tell us about the future prospects for the economy no matter what happened in the past.
Even on this front, things are looking up. Building approvals for the financial year to January this year came in at $628 million. While they are still a far cry from the building approvals in pre-COVID 2019 where they came in at $750 million for the same period, they are up almost five per cent on last year.
These numbers tell us that the recovery that we are seeing in the Illawarra building sector - which is a significant driver of the entire economy - will be sustained.
The building sector, as well, appears to have forgotten that we are in the middle of a global pandemic.
Illawarra real estate prices are rocketing up, Illawarra unemployment is plummeting and Illawarra building approvals are ratcheting up.
So there you have it. Illawarra real estate prices are rocketing up, Illawarra unemployment is plummeting and Illawarra building approvals are ratcheting up. It's all good news.
Call me cynical, but like the crowds at the Easter Show, none of these numbers make much sense given the risks that we face. Perhaps more to the point, it just doesn't seem right to me.
Alex Frino is Professor of Economics and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Strategy) at the University of Wollongong.