The latest round of figures tell a familiar story – the economy’s growing, but not quite as fast as we’d all prefer.

We haven’t yet seen the full picture for the June quarter.

That will come on Wednesday, with the national accounts and the headline gross domestic product (GDP) figure.

But the week’s kicked off with the usual mixed message.

The Australian Industry Group’s index of manufacturing performance signalled another monthly contraction in August, the 26th in a row.

It is the longest run of negative results for the index in the 21-year history of the survey.

And then there were figures from the ABS.

The value of building approvals, including both residential and non-residential sectors, jumped by six per cent in seasonally adjusted terms in July.

But that was not enough to make up for a fall of 10 per cent in June.

Approvals in July were still running at about $700 million a month more than a year before, so there has been a pickup and it is adding to growth as the building work gets under way.

But the boost to growth is not as strong as it needs to be.

The trend, which smooths out the short-term ups and down, is now edging lower according to the bureau’s calculations.

That suggests the economy hasn’t gained any momentum heading into the second half of the year.

And the starting point at the end of the first half wasn’t anything to write home about either, the other figures from the ABS seem to say.

Business inventories – stocks of unsold goods and raw materials – were built up in the June quarter, after being run down a bit in the March quarter.

That will add to June quarter GDP growth, but only to the tune of about a fifth of a percentage point.

And a range of indicators of income – company profits, small business profits and wages – show a rise of 0.4 per cent.

After adjusting for inflation, that might turn out to be nothing at all.

Chances are we’ll see a rise in GDP when the figures are released on Wednesday, but these numbers suggest it won’t be big enough to keep up with the need to generate jobs.

A familiar story.