Monthly Business Turnover Indicator

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Experimental indicator of business turnover derived from monthly Business Activity Statements

Reference period
December 2023
Released
9/02/2024

Key statistics

In seasonally adjusted terms, the December 2023 monthly business turnover indicator showed: 

  • Falls in 8 of the 13 published industries 
  • The largest fall was in Retail trade (-3.3%)
  • The largest rise was in Arts and recreation services (2.3%)
  • Year-on-year, rises were seen in 8 of 13 published industries
  • This experimental indicator is derived from Australian Taxation Office (ATO) Business Activity Statements (BAS) turnover data from monthly BAS remitters. It includes 13 of the 19 industry divisions classified according to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC), 2006.
  • Monthly BAS reporting covers businesses with GST annual turnover of $20 million or more and a proportion of smaller businesses that report monthly on a voluntary basis.
  • The estimated monthly changes in business turnover are aligned as closely as is feasible to the Australian System of National Accounts concept of market output. Users should exercise caution in comparing the indicator to other ABS economic outputs due to differences in concepts, scope, coverage, and methods.

Upcoming changes to the Monthly Business Turnover Indicator

Additional outputs will be included in the Monthly Business Turnover Indicator starting with the next release on 13 March 2024. 

An index representing the aggregate of the 13 in-scope ANZSIC divisions will be published, along with indexes for selected ANZSIC subdivisions.  These series will be available in original, seasonally adjusted and trend terms.

As part of these changes, the ABS assessed the method for seasonal adjustment across the three levels of output (aggregate, division and subdivision). Currently, the division-level series are directly adjusted, providing an independent assessment of the seasonality for each series. From next month, these series will be indirectly adjusted by applying seasonal adjustment to the subdivision-level series individually, then these values will be summed to obtain the seasonally adjusted series for the division. 

This change in method will result in revisions to the seasonally adjusted and trend estimates for the division-level series. 

Index base period: July 2019 = 100.0.

Industry

Total turnover differs between industries. This should be considered when analysing month-to-month movements in the context of overall economic activity. The chart below shows the monthly movements in the turnover indicator for December 2023 (represented by colour) and the selected industries' estimated share of total turnover for the 2022-23 financial year (represented by circle size). 

Chart showing the monthly movements in the turnover indicator for December 2023 (represented by colour) and the selected industries' estimated share of total turnover for the 2022-23 financial year (represented by circle size).

The chart has 13 circles, one for each industry division included in the Monthly Business Turnover Indicator. The size of each circle represents the share of total business turnover for the 2022-23 financial year for that industry. Circles are also given a colour shading to represent the monthly change in the Monthly Business Turnover Indicator for the current reference month. Industries with negative movements are coloured orange, those with little or no movement are grey, and positive movements are blue.

The largest circles are for Manufacturing, Mining, Wholesale trade, and Retail trade.

Arts and recreation services is a strong blue, showing positive movement in business turnover. Wholesale is coloured orange, showing a negative movement in business turnover.

Business turnover differs from the National Accounts concept of output. For example, the value of goods sold by wholesalers and subsequently retailers are reflected in turnover for both industries while National Accounts output measures the margins gained by each industry.

Industry analysis and charts

In December 2023, 8 of the 13 industry divisions included in the indicator showed falls in monthly turnover in seasonally adjusted terms. The largest falls in monthly turnover were seen in:

  • Retail trade (-3.3%)
  • Wholesale trade (-3.1%)
  • Professional, scientific and technical services (-2.2%)

The industries that showed the largest rises in December 2023 were:

  • Arts and recreation services (2.3%)
  • Accommodation and food services (0.8%)
  • Electricity, gas, water and waste services and Construction (Both 0.5%)

Year-on-year, 8 of 13 industry divisions recorded rises in business turnover. The largest rises were recorded in:

  • Construction (13.9%)
  • Other services (6.9%)
  • Accommodation and food services (6.1%)

The top three industry divisions recording falls in business turnover in December 2023, compared with December 2022 were:

  • Mining (-6.6%)
  • Electricity, gas, water and waste services (-3.6%)
  • Wholesale trade (-2.7%)

 

Mining

Manufacturing

Electricity, gas, water and waste services

Construction

Wholesale trade

Retail trade

Accommodation and food services

Transport, postal and warehousing

Information media and telecommunications

Professional, scientific and technical services

Administrative and support services

Arts and recreation services

Other services

Trend Graphs for Selected Industries

Trend Graphs for Selected Industries

Data downloads

Time series spreadsheets

Data files

Data Explorer datasets

Caution: Data in Data Explorer is currently released after the 11:30am release on the ABS website. Please check the reference period when using Data Explorer.

For more information about Data Explorer, see the Data Explorer user guide.

Business Turnover Indicator - Monthly percentage changes and indexes, January 2010 onwards

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