Aussie December quarter GDP has got itself up off the floor by a solid 3.4%, actually coming in close to economist’s expectations who – when all squished together by Reuters –  were looking at a 3.5% rise.

The latest crunched numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) also puts annual GDP growth at 4.2%.

At first blush these are some good looking numbers, but according to AMP Capital, Covid-19 has meant that the last two years of our national quarterly GDP numbers have had… something of ‘a zig-zag pattern’ to them.

This is the statistical x-ray of our national economy since it got whacked with the virus, sucking in as much oxygen as possible and then gasping for air as lockdown restrictions tightened and then eased depending on the Covid-19 cases and whatever hideous variant was getting up in the national respiratory system.

Check it out:

AMP Capital: that’s a zig-zag in there for sure

“This quarterly increase looks very large because of the fall in GDP (by 1.9%) in the prior period due to the lockdowns across the east coast of Australia,” says AMP Capital senior economist Diana Mousina who told Stockhead there was little in the detail which would’ve surprised either hawk, dove or pigeon.

With less Omicron-hospitalisations – and what appears to be a genuine lull in Covidocity – should mean economic activity will bounce around less this year.

Total disaster and new deadly strains aside, Mousina says AMP Capital expects our 2022 GDP growth to be solid, up by around 4.5%.

And that does compare pretty favourably to our pre-pandemic trend of 2.5%.

And just quickly

Consumer spending jumped by 6.3% in the December quarter, contributing a hefty 3.2 percentage points to growth.

Here’s another chart from Diana Mousina:

Via AMP Capital

That’s us – still refusing to go spend as much on services as we did in our pre-Covid lives.

On the plus side that’s really likely to rise in 2022 as the virus (touch wood) becomes less of a concern and we all dip into our “accumulated consumer savings.”

Those savings have really, really accumulated too.

Over the past two years this little household treasure chest has gotten heavier and now totals around $273b or 13% of GDP.

Mousina says that’s a handy buffer to pull out of our collective economic arses (our words, just her meaning) should the unthinkable – like a hideous new strain of lurgy (jinx) send us all the way back to the Stone Age, aka Melbourne 2020/21.