• Wage growth remains very strong nationwide - a reflection of how tight the labour market is.
• People remain confident, and continue to keep spending. Retail sales have thundered away since petrol prices dropped in August/September from historic highs.
• Housing is definitely off on a third wind. Annual price growth is accelerating above 10% p.a., though sales turnover is lagging behind.
• Car registrations are down around 10% from year-earlier levels. However, car sales grew strongly over the March quarter so the market is recovering from last year's petrol price blues.
• No one region stands out as a winner this report, but Nelson, Otago and the West Coast stack up well on a number of measures, so the South Island is the place to be at the moment!

 As always some care is required in interpretation of the regional statistics, many of them being subject to a sizeable measurement error. Hence the preference here is to look at a number of regional statistics together.

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