Signs of capacity constraint evident

After 14 years of continuous economic growth, the longest in its history as a federated nation, Australia's economy is increasingly running into capacity constraints. These include the lowest unemployment rate since 1976; the highest proportion of businesses citing labour shortages as a restraint on growth since 1989; the highest levels of plant capacity utilisation since 1989; and widespread anecdotal evidence of bottlenecks in energy supply and in rail and shipping infrastructure. More broadly, the gap between Australian's spending and their incomes has continued to widen, despite go...