Wading through a flood of data

With summer holidays now truly behind us, this week saw a flood of new data turn up. Westpac’s Employment Confidence Index (ECI), the NZIER’s Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion (QSBO), the Consumers Price Index (CPI), and the REINZ’s real estate statistics all came out this week. Add to that data the latest GlobalDairyTrade auction with another fall in dairy prices, and the recent decline in oil prices, and there are a lot of new facts to wade through when thinking about the state of the New Zealand economy. Although this data hasn’t changed our central view of where New Zealand will head in 2016, it does suggest that the risks around this view have changed.