Commentary Headline economic numbers do not reflect the hardship many Australians are enduring under prolonged lockdowns. The thousands of Australians who have had their jobs and businesses destroyed will find little solace in the fact the June quarter saw growth in Australia’s economy that has staved off a second official recession in two years. The official unemployment rate also sits at 4.6 percent—the lowest rate recorded in more than a decade. Figures from National Accounts data released on Wednesday(this may need to be updated) by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) saw 0.7 percent of GDP growth in the June quarter. A slight decline in the June quarter combined with the widely anticipated decline in the current quarter would have seen two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth—the technical definition of a recession. While not entirely useless, GDP is a highly aggregated and abstract number with many assumptions, limitations, and …