And Mr Battellino’s point was underlined yesterday with the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealing a sharp, across the board rise in the value of construction work done in the 3rd quarter, the first significant quarterly output survey to be released ahead of the national accounts.
That was thanks to the government’s stimulus spending, which made up for another quarter of weak private construction spending (although not as weak as in the previous two quarters of 2009).
The ABS said the seasonally adjusted estimate of construction work done rose 2.2% in the September quarter, after a fall of 0.1% in the June quarter.
It was up 6.9% in the year to September, compared with a rise of 5.4% over the June 2009 financial year.
That was much better than market forecasts for a fall of 0.5%.
The construction activity covered by this report makes up about one eighth of gross domestic product (GDP), so the overall increase could see a contribution to September quarter growth of around 0.3 percentage points.
Later today we will get the September quarter private investment figures, which could surprise on the upside as well, according to some analysts.
The ABS said there was an across the board rise in the value of building (up 2.6%), residential (up 1.8%), non-residential (up 2.3%) and engineering (up 1.8%) from the June quarter when they were all sharply negative.
The ABS said total construction work done was valued at $39.282 billion in the September quarter, compared with an upwardly revised $38.787 billion in the June quarter.
The ABS said total building work done in the September quarter rose to $18.676 billion, seasonally adjusted, from $18.208 billion in the June quarter.
Engineering work done rose to $20.956 billion in the September quarter, from $20.578 billion.
Within the total, construction for the private sector was down by 3.0% in the quarter and by 2.6% through the year.
The weakest spot was in private sector non-residential building, where activity fell 7.8% in the quarter and 20.4% from a year earlier.
(That’s the slump in CBD and light industrial building work where finance has proven very hard to obtain, or no one wants to buy developments.)
Private sector residential building work rose by 2.4% in the quarter but was still 5.8% down from a year earlier.
Engineering construction activity (pipelines, mines, bridges and the like) was down 5.1% in the quarter but was still up 11.5% on the 3rd quarter of 2008.
It was a different story for construction done on behalf of the public sector, which rose by 17.6% in the quarter and by 39.7% over the year.
Both the quarterly and annual percentage rises in the public sector category were the biggest by a wide margin in 23 years of available data.
The result was clearly affected by the government stimulus package that led to a surge in non-residential building approvals over the middle months of the year (the Schools program referred to by Brickworks CEO, Lindsay Partridge in his address to Tuesday’s AGM).
As well skilled job vacancies rose 2.4% in November compared to the previous month, new figures out yesterday show.
This was the fourth consecutive monthly increase, having previously steadily fallen since November 2007, and another sign that the demand for labour is picking up, especially from the construction and engineering sectors.
The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) said its skilled vacancies index in November was 42 points, 35.1 lower than in November 2008.
Within the index, vacancies rose by 1.1% for professionals, 2.3% for associate professionals, and a solid 3.1% by trades in November.
The DEWR vacancies index is compiled from job ads in major metropolitan newspapers across the country.
By trade, positions for construction workers jumped 6.2%, while metal workers vacancies rose 4.4%.
By state, NSW had a 2% increase in vacancies, while Victoria reported an 0.9% rise.
Queensland rose 3.4%, South Australia 3.3%, Western Australia 3% and Tasmania 5.3%.
