Show me the share of their income Australian households save, how far it swung during the pandemic, and whether it is back to where it was before.
About six and a half cents in every dollar of net disposable income. Seasonally adjusted, the household saving ratio was 6.5 per cent in the June quarter of 2026, in line with the 6.2 per cent of the 2010sbut about half the 1960s-to-1980s norm — after reaching 23.3 per cent in mid-2020 and collapsing to 1.8 in 2023.
Household saving ratio, seasonally adjusted
6.5%
June quarter 2026 · from 6.4% in the March quarter
Pandemic peak, seasonally adjusted
23.3%
June quarter 2020 · highest in the series
Post-pandemic trough, seasonally adjusted
1.8%
September quarter 2023 · lowest since 2008
1. Back to the 2010s, not to the post-war norm
The is what is left of the 's net disposable income after it has spent, net of the capital it uses up. It went from 6.2 per cent in the December quarter of 2019 to 23.3 two quarters later, when arrived and there was nothing open to spend them on, then fell to 1.8 per cent by late 2023 as prices and mortgage rates rose. The recovery since has taken eleven quarters. Which level counts as normal is a choice: the 2010s averaged 6.2 per cent, the 2000s 1.2, and the 1970s 16.0.
Household saving ratio
Household net saving as a share of household net disposable income, seasonally adjusted
Saving and spending are one decision seen twice. was 56.1 per cent of in 2005-06 and 52.0 per cent in 2025-26, though not as a steady drift: the share was 57.2 per cent in 2015-16, above where it started, and the whole of the fall came after that. It bottomed at 49.1 per cent in 2021-22, not in 2020-21. General rose from 18.3 per cent of GDP to 23.3 over the same twenty years, more than the household share fell, so the two do not net out — the rest sits in trade and inventories.
Household spending as a share of the economy
Household final consumption expenditure, current prices, original, share of GDP, financial years
The is only one saver. across the whole economy — households, companies and government together, after allowing for the capital used up in production — was 3.6 per cent of in 2025-26, against 7.5 per cent in 2012-13. It averaged 13.0 per cent of GDP across the two decades to 1979-80 and peaked at 15.9 per cent in 1973-74, which is the fall this heading means. It has also been lower than today inside the recent window, at 2.4 per cent in 2015-16, so the comparison year chosen decides the story.
National net saving
Net saving, current prices, original, share of GDP, financial years
4. And invests a smaller share than it did in the mining boom
Saving and investment are separate accounts, and the gap between them is what Australia borrows from abroad. was 24.8 per cent of in 2025-26, below the 27.7 per cent of 2012-13 at the peak of the mining construction boom, and up from the 22.6 per cent low of 2020-21. Private investment is 19.3 per cent of GDP and public investment 5.5, the latter up from 4.6 per cent in 2015-16. This is a gross measure and the 3.6 per cent net saving figure above is net of the capital used up, so the two are not directly comparable.
Investment as a share of the economy
Gross fixed capital formation, current prices, original, share of GDP, financial years
—The household saving ratio is a net measure: it subtracts consumption of fixed capital from household income before the ratio is taken, which is why it sits well below the 'share of income not spent' a household would calculate for itself.
—It is also a residual — the difference between two large estimates, income and consumption — so it is revised more heavily than most national accounts series, and quarter-to-quarter moves of a few tenths should not be read as signal.
—The 2020 and 2021 values reflect one-off pandemic transfers and closed borders and are not comparable with surrounding quarters.
—The financial-year shares are current-price ratios of four-quarter sums of original series. Chain volume measures are never used for a share anywhere on this page.
—The ABS Data API publishes no household income account, so the 2010s average on the first chart is the mean of the forty published quarterly ratios rather than a ratio of summed net saving to summed net disposable income. The two are different operations; the mean is what the figure is, and the chart series is labelled as calculated.
References
Data extracted . Reviewed 2026-09-17 by Aard Data Team. Each numbered entry is the publication that documents the figures; the calls beneath it are the ones the retrieval actually made, and each figure is numbered under its publication — 1.1, 1.2 — and links to the narrowest call that returns it.
Vintage: Quarterly. Chain volume measures are not additive except in the reference year; current price values are. Revised with each quarterly and annual release and at each historical revision.
The ABS publishes the saving ratio itself, so no division is done here. The 2010s average of 6.2 per cent quoted on the page is the mean of the forty quarters from March 2010 to December 2019 in this same series, calculated by Aard. Re-run verbatim on 2026-09-16 while migrating this page to evidence records; every value below reproduced exactly.
1.63.6 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Net saving, all sectors, over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.77.5 % of GDPderived here · 2012-13 · Net saving, all sectors, over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.85.3 % of GDPderived here · 2005-06 · Net saving, all sectors, over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
Net saving is the whole economy's — households, corporations and government — after consumption of fixed capital, which is why it is far below the household ratio above. Both series come out of the one call, both current prices. The shares are calculated by Aard from four-quarter sums. Re-run verbatim on 2026-09-16 while migrating this page to evidence records; every value below reproduced exactly.
The household saving ratio over its whole published life, fetched with no startPeriod on 2026-09-17, after the round-2 audit found the page calling 6.5 per cent 'back to normal' against a window that excludes every decade in which saving was high. M7.HSR.20.AUS.Q returns 268 quarters from 1959-Q3. Decade means of the published quarterly ratios, calculated by Aard: 1960s 13.9, 1970s 16.0, 1980s 11.8, 1990s 4.8, 2000s 1.2, 2010s 6.2, 2020s so far 8.5. The page's chart starts in 1995 and its 'normal' is the 2010s, so a reader saw only the two lowest decades on record. At 6.5 per cent households save roughly half what they saved through the 1960s to 1980s and several times what they saved in the 2000s: which of those is 'normal' is a choice, and the page has to make it visible rather than make it silently. This is the same standard section 3 of the same page already applies to national net saving, where it reaches back to 1959-60, states the 13.0 per cent mean and adds that 'the comparison year chosen decides the story'. The audit's point is that section 1 was left on the opposite standard. These are means of published ratios, not of growth rates — a saving ratio is a share, and averaging shares over quarters is admissible where averaging growth rates would not be. Every value reproduced exactly on 2026-09-17. All five observations were re-fetched from this query and checked against the ABS response on 2026-09-20.
1.1456.1 % of GDPderived here · 2005-06 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.1552 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.1651 % of GDPderived here · 2020-21 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
Numerator and denominator are the same call: ABS:ANA_EXP(1.0.0) carries GDP alongside the expenditure components, and its GDP is identical to ABS:ANA_AGG's. Both are current prices, which are additive; chain volume measures are not, and a share computed from them would be wrong. Financial years are four-quarter sums of original series, calculated by Aard — the ABS publishes no quarterly financial-year total. Re-run verbatim on 2026-09-16 while migrating this page to evidence records; every value below reproduced exactly.
1.1757.2 % of GDPderived here · 2015-16 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.1856.1 % of GDPderived here · 2005-06 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.1952 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2018.3 % of GDPderived here · 2005-06 · General government final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.GGS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2123.3 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · General government final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.GGS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2227.7 % of GDPderived here · 2005-06 · Gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2328.2 % of GDPderived here · 2007-08 · Gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2427.7 % of GDPderived here · 2012-13 · Gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2522.6 % of GDPderived here · 2020-21 · Gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2622.7 % of GDPderived here · 2019-20 · Gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2724.8 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
The PATH between the endpoints the household-saving page quotes, written after the 2026-09-16 audit found three claims that its endpoints supported and its path did not. (1) The page said household consumption 'drifted down as a share of the economy for two decades' from 56.1 in 2005-06 to 52.0 in 2025-26. Both endpoints are right; the middle is not a drift. The share was 57.2 per cent in 2015-16, ABOVE where it started, and the whole of the fall came afterwards. (2) The page attributed that fall partly to 'the growing share of the economy taken by ... investment'. Investment did not grow its share: gross fixed capital formation was 27.7 per cent of GDP in 2005-06 and 24.8 per cent in 2025-26, a fall of 2.9 points across the same window. The government half of the claim is true and had no record behind it, so it is recorded here: general government final consumption expenditure went from 18.3 to 23.3 per cent. (3) The page called 2019-20 the investment trough. 2020-21 is lower, at 22.6, and the page's own chart plots it. It also called 27.7 per cent 'the mining construction boom' peak; the series peak is 28.2 in 2007-08, before it. All current prices and original, because current prices are additive and chain volume measures are not. Financial-year totals are four-quarter sums (September, December, March, June) and the shares are those sums over the same year's current-price GDP, both calculated by Aard — the ABS publishes no financial-year figure in this dataflow. Fetched from the same dataflow and the same June 2026 release on 2026-09-16 and every value reproduced.
1.2851 % of GDPderived here · 2020-21 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.2949.1 % of GDPderived here · 2021-22 · Household final consumption expenditure over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· C.FCE.PHS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
The household consumption share's actual minimum, after the round-2 audit found the page calling 2020-21 'the dip' when the page's own chart plots the low a year later. 2019-20 is 52.46, 2020-21 is 50.95 and 2021-22 is 49.05 — the series minimum. Current prices and original; four-quarter sums and the shares over the same year's current-price GDP, calculated by Aard. Fetched from the same dataflow and the same June 2026 release on 2026-09-17.
1.3024.8 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Gross fixed capital formation, all sectors, over GDP, current prices, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.3127.7 % of GDPderived here · 2012-13 · Gross fixed capital formation, all sectors, over GDP, current prices, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.3222.7 % of GDPderived here · 2019-20 · Gross fixed capital formation, all sectors, over GDP, current prices, financial year· C.GFC.SSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.3319.3 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Private gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, financial year· C.GFC.PSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.345.5 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Public gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, financial year· C.GFC.GSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.354.6 % of GDPderived here · 2015-16 · Public gross fixed capital formation over GDP, current prices, financial year· C.GFC.GSS.10.AUS.Q over C.GPM.SSS.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
Total, private and public investment against GDP, all four series out of the one call, which is what lets the sectors be set beside the total without a linkage question. Shares calculated by Aard from four-quarter sums of current-price original series. Re-run verbatim on 2026-09-16 while migrating this page to evidence records; every value below reproduced exactly.
1.3615.9 % of GDPderived here · 1973-74 · Net saving over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.3715 % of GDPderived here · 1959-60 · Net saving over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.3810.5 % of GDPderived here · 1979-80 · Net saving over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.393.9 % of GDPderived here · 2000-01 · Net saving over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.402.4 % of GDPderived here · 2015-16 · Net saving over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
1.413.6 % of GDPderived here · 2025-26 · Net saving over GDP, current prices, original, financial year· M3.SAV.10.AUS.Q over M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q, ×100, each summed over the four quarters of the financial year first. Both series come out of this response; the share is computed from them and no call returns it.
National net saving as a share of GDP back to the start of the series, fetched on 2026-09-16 specifically to answer the audit's point that the section heading 'The nation saves less than it used to' was true and unsupported. The page's chart starts in 1995-96, so the fall the heading asserts is not visible on it: net saving averaged 13.0 per cent of GDP across 1959-60 to 1979-80 and peaked at 15.9 per cent in 1973-74, against 3.6 per cent in 2025-26. The audit also found the page's comparator years were the high side of a volatile series: 2015-16 was 2.4 per cent, BELOW today, and 2000-01 was 3.9, and neither was mentioned. The series minimum is 1.2 per cent in 1991-92. This is a NEW call, not one recovered from the transcripts — the calls this page was built from start at 1990-Q1 and cannot reach the 1960s and 1970s at all, so the heading could not have been supported from them. It was executed on 2026-09-16 against the same June 2026 release and is recorded here exactly as run. GDP is the matching M3.GPM.10.AUS.Q current-price original series over the same financial years; both are four-quarter sums and the ratios are calculated by Aard.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, June 2026. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. CC BY 4.0
