The Weekend Australian
1-2 August 2020
Patrick Commins – Economics Correspondent
Baby boomers are alone among the generations to suffer a fall in income through the COVID-19 crisis, according to Commonwealth Bank analysis of three million households who bank with the lender.
The unprecedented level of government support in response to COVID-19 and the massive take-up of the early access to super schemes boosted average household income overall by 4.2 per cent over the year to the June quarter, the research shows.
Salary income dropped 6.6 per cent on average as the health crisis put hundreds of thousands of Australians out of work. But a 54 per cent surge in average incomes from government benefits versus a year earlier, and a 64 per cent jump in “investment income” — which captures payments from the first withdrawal of up to $10,000 from super under the special early-release scheme — has led to what CBA senior economist Kristina Clifton called a “positive income shock”.
Still, spending was down close to 9 per cent in the June quarter from a year before as households hunkered down amid the first recession in close to three decades.
“We can see that on average people are saving a lot of money at the moment,” Ms Clifton said.
While the average income among the three million households has climbed, a breakdown by generation reveals that boomer households have on average experienced a 1.4 per cent drop. Meanwhile, the two youngest cohorts — Generation Z and millennials — enjoyed the biggest increases, at 8.9 per cent and 6.7 per cent respectively. The average income among Generation X households climbed 3.2 per cent over the year to the June quarter, while older Australians had an increase of 2.8 per cent.
Ms Clifton said boomers had not received as much of the emergency government support packages. Nor had they made as much use of the special rules allowing early access to their retirement savings.
The bank’s data showed a 50 per cent average surge in government benefits across households, but boomers had received a comparatively lower 24 per cent boost. The three younger generations received in the order of 40 per cent more from the government in over the three months to June versus the same period a year before.
And while the overall average household’s level of spending fell substantially from last year to this, Gen Z spent nearly 4 per cent more, and millennials an extra 1 per cent. Last week Treasury released figures suggesting part-time and casual workers on the $1500 JobKeeper payment were being paid in aggregate $6bn more than they were earning before the crisis.
