GDP (gross domestic product) is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country over a period. It is the broadest single measure of economic activity. The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes Australia’s GDP quarterly in the national accounts.
GDP adds up everything the economy produces for final use in a quarter: household consumption, business investment, government spending and net exports. Reported growth figures are adjusted for inflation, so "real GDP growth" describes a genuine change in output rather than a change in prices.
Two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP is the shorthand definition of a technical recession, though economists treat it as a rule of thumb rather than a verdict. Analysts also watch GDP per capita, which can fall while headline GDP rises if population growth outpaces output.
Real output per person is three operations away from the headline, and their order is fixed. Suppose nominal GDP of $700 billion in one year and $735 billion the next, both illustrative: growth of 5.0 per cent in current prices. The Australian Bureau of Statistics obtains an implicit price deflator by dividing a current price value by its chain volume counterpart, so suppose that deflator moved from 100.0 to 103.0. Deflating gives $735 billion over 1.03, a real level of $713.6 billion, and real growth of 1.9 per cent rather than 5.0. The population divisor comes last, GDP per capita being the ratio of the chain volume estimate to an estimate of the resident Australian population. Suppose a population moving from 27.0 million to 27.6 million and real output per person goes from $25,926 to $25,855, down 0.3 per cent in a year total output grew.
This page defines the measure; the current quarterly figures and their history live on Tradergy’s GDP page, sourced from the ABS national accounts.
Longer read: The three ways GDP is measured. Gross domestic product can be built three ways and they should give the same answer. Quarterly they do not, and the published Australian figure handles that by averaging all three rather than choosing between them.
The practical companion to this definition is the live GDP page.
Related terms
Consumer price index (CPI) · Unemployment rate · All terms
Primary authority: ABS national accounts. Definition reviewed against the authority’s published material; this page is reference information, not advice.
Common questions
What does GDP actually include?
The final value of goods and services produced within Australia in the period: household spending, business investment, government consumption and investment, and exports minus imports. Intermediate goods are excluded so that nothing is counted twice on its way to a finished product.
Why do the ABS figures come out so long after the quarter?
Compiling the national accounts means reconciling production, income and expenditure data from across the whole economy. The ABS publishes the quarterly result about two months after the quarter ends, then revises it as more complete source data arrives.
What is the difference between GDP and GDP per capita?
GDP measures the economy’s total output; GDP per capita divides it by the population. In periods of strong population growth the two can tell different stories, with total output rising while output per person stands still or falls.