Monthly Household Spending Indicator (MHSI)

Name: Monthly Household Spending Indicator (MHSI)
Creator: Australian Bureau of Statistics
Published: 2026-06-07
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Monthly Australian household spending by category and state. The ABS-blessed successor to the discontinued Retail Trade publication (RT, ceased 31 July 2025).

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics · Licensed CC-BY 4.0 · dataset id abs.HSI_M

Get this dataset

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer ak_your_key' \
  https://api.ausdata.io/v1/data/abs/HSI_M

Returns JSON with the original Australian Bureau of Statistics attribution on every response. Add:

?format=csv for CSV
?limit=1000 to fetch more than the default page
?start= / ?end= to window a time-series dataset by period

Full description

Monthly Australian household spending by category and state. The ABS-blessed successor to the discontinued Retail Trade publication (RT, ceased 31 July 2025). Built from comprehensive transactions data (banks, point-of-sale, payment processors) - more representative than the legacy retail survey. Use this for: real-time consumer spending sentiment, retail inventory planning, sector demand forecasting, post-COVID consumer behaviour research, comparing spending between states, journalists tracking cost-of-living impacts. The most-cited monthly consumer indicator going forward. Defaults to total household spending (all categories), seasonally adjusted, Australia-wide, current prices, monthly. Override `category`, `region`, or `price_adjustment` for finer slices. Use `measure` to switch between dollar values, index, monthly % change, and through-the- year % change. Reference period: typically released ~6 weeks after month-end.

Free tier: 500 calls a month, no card. Get a key, browse all Australian Bureau of Statistics datasets, or read the docs.