Australia Construction Falls 2.1% in June Quarter as Datacentre Boom Fails to Lift GDP
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 26
Australia Construction Falls 2.1% in June Quarter as Datacentre Boom Fails to Lift GDP
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 26
Summary
Australia’s total construction work fell 2.1% in the June quarter, with weaker engineering activity outweighing gains in non-residential building, which includes datacentres.
That drop points to construction subtracting about 0.3 percentage points from June-quarter GDP, reversing a roughly 0.5-point contribution in the March quarter.
Datacentre-related spending is still expected to show up mainly in machinery and equipment, but much of that consists of imported chips, cooling systems and other hardware rather than domestic jobs or household income.
Construction’s headline level remains high enough to worry the Reserve Bank about capacity constraints, yet private-sector construction wages rose only 3.3% annually in the June quarter, barely above the 3.2% private-sector average.
The report argues the AI investment surge is boosting imports more than living standards, leaving next week’s GDP data to test whether datacentre spending is delivering meaningful domestic growth.