What do these
profits measure?

Gross operating profits.

ABS company gross operating profits exclude selected items from profits before income tax, including interest income and expenses, depreciation and amortisation, exchange gains and losses, and certain asset gains and losses. They are not company after-tax net earnings or the gross profit line in a company’s accounts.

Unincorporated gross operating profits apply the corresponding concept to unincorporated businesses. Business gross operating profits combine the company and unincorporated categories.

Which businesses are covered?

These are private-sector estimates from the ABS Quarterly Business Indicators Survey. The survey excludes micro non-employing businesses, public-sector businesses and specified industries, including agriculture, forestry and fishing, general government, life insurance, superannuation funds and private households employing staff. The profit tables also omit education and training, and health care and social assistance. Financial and insurance coverage is limited; these figures are not comprehensive bank or financial-sector profits.

For employing businesses with fewer than 20 employees, profit estimates use sales information and estimated profit-to-sales relationships. Company figures include quasi-corporations and Australian branches of overseas companies, while excluding overseas branches of Australian companies. These totals are not typical-business profits or an exhaustive total for the whole economy.

Levels, changes and missing values.

Levels are quarterly flows in current dollars, shown as billions by dividing the ABS $ millions by 1,000. They are not annualised. Quarterly movements come from the published ABS change tables. Annual changes use 100 × (level / level four quarters earlier − 1), requiring five consecutive numeric quarters and a positive earlier level. Missing and suppressed values stay unavailable and lines break across missing observations.

The total-less-mining level is the total minus mining. Its quarterly and annual growth rates are calculated from those residual levels with positive comparison bases. It is labelled as a calculation throughout. A change in profits is not a profit margin; no margin is inferred without matching revenue and coverage.

Seasonal adjustment and revised history.

The section uses seasonally adjusted series only. ABS adjusts for recurring seasonal patterns, and can revise both recent and older observations. This is one preserved June 2026 publication edition, including the revised history in that edition; it is not an archive of what was known at each past date. Available history begins in September 1994 for company levels and March 2001 for unincorporated and combined business levels; quarterly movement series begin one quarter later.

The announced next Business Indicators release is 30 November 2026. Dates can change. This section uses an explicitly adopted edition and does not update automatically.

Profits and National Accounts.

Business Indicators gross operating profits and National Accounts gross operating surplus differ in concepts, coverage and compilation. They are not interchangeable. A profit-share measure from National Accounts must retain its own definition and denominator. Explore National Accounts definitions and compare wage rates with prices.

These charts show changes and associations. They do not establish a cause of inflation, wage changes or investment.

Sources and reuse.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Business Indicators, Australia, June 2026, tables 11–16, published 31 August 2026. See the ABS methodology and glossary.

ABS statistical data are reused under CC BY 4.0 terms. Calculations and presentation are by The Economic Picture, independently of ABS; no ABS endorsement is implied.

Source edition: OD-BP01-PROFITS-2026-Q2-0.1.0. Native series identifiers accompany interactive charts; source originals, cell locators and validation evidence are retained by OD Engine.