Speech: RBA Governor Philip Lowe ‘From Recovery to Expansion’

Introduction:

“As we all know, the past year has been an extremely challenging one in the life of our nation. But as a country we pulled together, and we have been up to the task. The results are evident in our health and economic outcomes, which are better than elsewhere in the world. It is important that we don’t lose sight of this.

This morning, I would like to talk about how the economy is now transitioning from recovery mode to expansion mode, and highlight some of the issues that this raises, including for regional Australia. I will then conclude with some comments about the outlook for monetary policy.

Back in March last year, the national economic strategy quickly turned to building a bridge to the day when the virus was contained. The idea was to use this bridge to help people and businesses get across to the other side. The hope was that by doing this, we could avoid much of the costly damage that would be caused by mass unemployment and widespread business failures. This was the right strategy, and it was supported by governments across Australia, the RBA and Australia’s financial institutions. The results speak for themselves.

Today, the level of employment in Australia is above its pre-pandemic level. Australia and New Zealand are the only advanced economies where this is the case (Graph 1). In the United States, employment is still nearly 5 per cent below the pre-pandemic level and in Spain it is 3 per cent below.”

---

---

Download the full speech as a PDF

Download PDF

Australian Farm InstitutePhilip LoweRBASpeech