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Economic optimism
About the author
Ryan Neelam
Ryan Neelam was Director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program at the Lowy Institute. He led the flagship annual Lowy Institute Poll, was project director for the Global Diplomacy Index, and wrote about climate diplomacy and multilateral policy.
Despite global economic headwinds including persistent inflation, optimism about Australia’s economic performance in the next five years remains reasonably solid (62%), unchanged from 2022. While this is 17 points lower than optimism in 2021 (79%), when there were high hopes for a post-Covid global economic recovery, it is ten points higher than the record low registered at the outset of the pandemic in 2020.
This relatively stable outlook on Australia’s economic prospects mirrors Australians’ perceptions of the global economy. In 2023, the number of Australians who see ‘a severe downturn in the global economy’ as a critical threat (57%) has not increased substantially from 2022.
However, when it comes to the strength of optimism people feel, barely any Australians are now ‘very optimistic’ about the economy (3%), in contrast to the 19% who said they were very optimistic in 2010.
Looking across age groups in the Australian community, there is a difference in opinion on this issue between those at the opposite ends of the age spectrum. While 68% of those aged 60 years and over are optimistic about Australia’s economic performance in the next five years, only 55% of those aged 18–29 feel this way.
