And the preliminary results from ANZ's monthly survey of business sentiment for July recorded strong rebounds in firms' expectations of their own activity and employment and investment intentions.
However that survey, while it is the most recent, is significantly rosier than the picture that emerges from other surveys of business and consumer sentiment over the past month.
And the survey of credit conditions undertaken by the Reserve Bank in the last two weeks of June, which reflects banks' perceptions of the outlook, is something of a reality check.
The banks report that, low interest rates notwithstanding, "uncertainty about the strength of future final demand is causing businesses to review their investment intentions". Further tightening of lending standards is likely too.
As for the housing market, Westpac economist Michael Gordon is unconvinced that its recent strength will last: "Prices are caught between much lower borrowing rates in the near term and a severe hit to economic activity that may become more apparent later in the year as the wage subsidy expires, unemployment rises and the international tourism market remains out of action."
Some of the strength of electronic card spending last month may be the result of pent-up demand from the lockdown. For the June quarter as a whole, spending was 15 per cent lower than the same period last year.
One of the factors likely to weigh on consumer sentiment and spending is uncertainty about whether New Zealand's enviable Covid-19 numbers will hold up. The fact that Melbourne has been locked back down is a reminder of how fragile this is.
In the meantime, 1500-odd infections, 22 of them fatal, look pretty good when the totals for the other 99.9 per cent of the world, at the time of writing, are 13 million (up more than 1 million in just the last week) and 575,000 respectively.
Both of those global meters are whirring.
The bottleneck at the border for returning expatriates testifies to the failure of policies pursued elsewhere which put a higher priority on preserving businesses than preserving lives, and the risk of succumbing to the same temptation.
The other key economic uncertainty is how bad unemployment will get. While it is encouraging that the ANZ survey reported a 15-point bounce in firms' employment intentions (albeit still to net negative levels) it is actual employment outcomes that matter.
The wage subsidy is due to come off in September. It has supported 1.7 million jobs, a majority of total employment, at a cost of $12.7 billion.
Even with it in place, as of two weeks ago there were 191,000 people on Jobseeker support, up 45,000 on four months ago.
The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research's quarterly survey of business opinion released last week, responses to which mainly came in about a month after the lockdown ended, found a net 19 per cent of firms reporting they had cut staff numbers in the June quarter — the ugliest number since September 2009.
And ominously, a net 28 per cent expect to reduce headcount in the September quarter.
Investment intentions also fell sharply, with a net 36 per cent of businesses planning to reduce investment both in buildings and in plant and machinery over the coming year.
For both corporates and small and medium enterprises, the banks for their part report that demand for credit for capital expenditure fell in the first half of the year and they expect it to remain muted for the rest of the year.
A weak outlook for employment and investment renders any recovery shallow-rooted and vulnerable. Photo / 123RF
Meanwhile, the consumer sentiment surveys are also back at levels last seen during the global financial crisis or the recession which followed.
A recovery in that is a precondition for a sustained lift in business confidence too, at least for businesses chasing the consumer's dollar.
Without it, policies like cutting interest rates or extending soft loans from taxpayers to businesses via the Inland Revenue, are attempts to set fire to sodden wood.
The monthly ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence survey plummeted 37 index points or 30 per cent between February and April. It has since recovered 20 points or just over half of that decline, but it remains at levels last seen in the post-GFC recession.
A net 10 per cent of respondents expect house prices will be higher in two years' time, but that compares with a net 73 per cent confident of that back in February.
"Willingness to buy major household items has bounced enormously off its lockdown lows, but remains at levels prevailing during the last recession — hardly a period that retailers recall with fondness," said ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner.
"The current flurry of spending as households spend their involuntary lockdown savings (and international holiday budgets) is likely to peter out relatively soon."
The quarterly Westpac McDermott Miller survey, released a month ago, also recorded overall consumer confidence at the lowest levels since the GFC, even if not as grim as the bank's economists had expected.
While a net 13 per cent of respondents considered they were worse off financially than a year ago, a net 15 per cent expect to be better off financially in a year's time.
The threats to household incomes and consumer spending, and by extension to business confidence, are mounting unemployment, a reduction in average hours worked by those who keep their jobs, an increase in precautionary saving and a reversal of the wealth effect (where people spend a few cents in the dollar of increases in housing equity or financial assets even when they have to borrow to do so).
