The final piece of data before the Reserve Bank board considers interest rates this afternoon is a salutary warning about lifting rates: the rapid decline in the housing sector shows no signs of abating — if anything, the decline is getting worse.

The graphs from the ABS tell the story on the collapse in housing approvals:

We’re not back to the GFC-induced depths of late 2008, but nearly everything is down: approvals, value of approvals, new housing, renovations. The only thing that’s positive is the less-important category of seasonally-adjusted non-residental housing, though even that fell in trend terms.

The graphs tell a story that’s readily interpreted: after the withdrawal of the first home owners’ boost at the end of 2009, housing approvals slumped, but that fall began moderating in mid-2010. Then the RBA’s interest rate hikes kicked in and accelerated the decline again.

Retail trade figures aren’t due out until tomorrow, when we’ll know whether or not the RBA has pulled the trigger again, but barring a significant reversal in the current climate of retailer writedowns and laments about reluctant customers, two of our biggest-employing sectors look sickly indeed.

The only faint good news was in Queensland, where approvals were flat, rather than falling. Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia recorded small falls. New South Wales recorded the biggest fall. Both commercial and housing construction in NSW has yet to recover from the malaise that set in in the last year of Labor.

On current trends, an interest rate rise this afternoon might lock in the decline in housing construction back to GFC levels.