Mood lifts across Australia as second wave of COVID-19 passes
As part of our ongoing pursuit of understanding Australian society and citizens we conducted our monthly survey of 1,000 Australians in early November 2020. Through our regular look at what is concerning Australians we shed light on the impact of today’s changing world.
In the month prior to the November fieldwork period new COVID-19 case numbers in Australia continued to decrease, dropping from around 20 cases per day to single digit case numbers largely driven by Victoria achieving no new cases from 26 October.
As the health and financial impact of COVID-19 continues to lessen, the November Ipsos Issues Monitor shows a continued reduction in concern over the top three issues with The Economy (46%) down 8 points since October and Unemployment (39%) down 4 points.
Following the volatility in concern over Healthcare observed at the start and end of the first wave of COVID-19 infections, the downward trend in concern over Healthcare (30%) down 2 points since October) is relatively slow and back at a similar level to that measured in January.
This lessening of concern is perhaps unsurprising as restrictions across the country continued to ease, particularly in Victoria. We saw the AFL, ARL and Super Netball grand finals all take place in front of live crowds. The Reserve Bank of Australia had cut cash rates by 0.15 points to 0.1% and while seasonally adjusted unemployment rates had increased from 6.9% to 7.0%, 178,000 new jobs had been created in October. In keeping with the increasingly buoyant mood across the country, our November Ipsos Global Consumer Confidence Index showed Australians’ confidence closing in on their pre-pandemic levels, with the highest growth over the past month in the 24 countries surveyed.
This buoyant mood is also reflected by findings uncovered by the most recent wave of our Ipsos Essentials study. Seen below, while citizens of countries around the world are feeling both that things in their country are increasingly out of control and that the threat of COVID-19 is increasing, Australians feel not only that their nation is more in control now when compared with October (31% in November vs 37% in October), but we can also see that perceived threat is down approximately 10 percentage points when compared with September. In this period of growing confidence, almost 50% of Australians are still feeling very anxious about resuming normal activities after the pandemic. However, consistent with the high level of concern for the Economy and Unemployment noted above, almost 70% agree we should restart the economy and allowing businesses to open or operate as they choose.
Click here to download the previous Ipsos Issues Monitor COVID-19 October Edition.
Click here to access previous Ipsos Issues Monitor Reports
