Australia's wage growth remains solid. But now the recovery needs to be sustained

The Guardian

14-05-2025

Labor swept to victory on 3 May after a campaign dominated by concerns about the cost of living. But the latest wage and home lending data should impress upon the government that, in three years, they may not be so lucky.
First the good news – wage growth remains solid. In the March quarter of this year, overall wages grew 0.9%, and for the past year wages were up 3.4%. That is a good result. We should celebrate wage growth, and not submit to the spin of business groups who preach bankruptcy and recession whenever wages rise.
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But the figures also point to just how tough it is going to be to recover the value of our wages that has been lost in the past four years.
In March, the 3.4% overall growth was driven by a pretty strong increase in public-sector wages of 1.0% in the quarter and 3.6% over the year:
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The increase largely came from new state-based enterprise agreements that saw public-sector wages in Tasmania rise by 1.8% in the quarter, 2.0% in NSW and 2.8% in Western Australia.
It means across the nation, over the past year, public sector workers on average have had bigger wage rises than those in the private sector:
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This does not mean that public sector workers are living high on the hog. Over the past four years, private sector workers in each state except Queensland have had better pay rises:
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I choose March 2021 as a reference point because it is now four years since we embarked on the extraordinary run of eight consecutive quarters of private sector wage rises slower than inflation. And if you think that is bad, for public sector workers, the streak began in the middle of 2020 and went for 13 quarters.
It's why the government was correct to say they inherited a bad situation, not created it.
Now, at least, wages are rising faster than inflation – albeit only just, and only if we measure price rises using the consumer price index. The CPI does not count mortgage repayments. If instead we use the employee cost-of-living index, which does include mortgage repayments, wages grew slower in the past year than most workers' cost of living:
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If we measure real wages using CPI it seems like they have been rising for some time, whereas using cost of living, they haven't increased for a long while:
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The picture since March 2021 is particularly bleak. Using the official CPI measure, real wages are still 4.4% below what they were four years ago. If we use the employee cost-of-living index the fall is 8.9%:
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What does that mean in dollars? Even if we just use the official CPI as the measure of prices, someone who, in March 2021, was earning $90,000, would today be getting the equivalent of $86,055. That's nearly $4,000 lost in purchasing power.
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And if that feels bad, just consider that if real wages continue to grow at the same pace they have over the past two years, it won't be till the end of 2031 that the value of our wages is equal to what it was in March 2021.
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While there is essentially no limit to how much faster prices can grow above wages, our entire economic system is designed to prevent wages from growing too much faster than inflation for fear of unleashing the mythical 'wages-price spiral'.
It is why the government must not let up on policies which enable workers to bargain for decent pay rises.
At least we may be able to see wages grow faster than the cost of living if the RBA starts cutting rates again.
On Wednesday morning the market was fully pricing in a 25 basis point rate cut and an even money chance of a 50 basis point cut. Nothing in these figures should greatly alter those odds.
The likelihood of more than three rate cuts this year however has fallen as investors have become less concerned about a global recession due to Trump's idiotic tariffs policy:
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The good news of real wage rises however, is tempered by the latest lending figures for new mortgages that were also released on Wednesday. Across the nation, the average size of an owner-occupier mortgage rose 8.4% in the past year – more than double the 3.4% wage growth.
It's even worse when we again consider what has happened since March 2021.
The average size of a mortgage across Australia has gone from $506,000 to $660,000 – a 30% increase – and the story is much worse if you live in South Australia, Western Australia or Queensland:
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And a rate cut next week will probably create an uptick in house prices and, in turn, mortgages.
So welcome to the next three years and beyond.
During the first term, the Albanese government can claim that they stopped the freefall in real wages that they inherited. But now the recovery needs to be sustained. They also need to do this while ensuring housing becomes more affordable.
Failure to do that might see the attacks on the cost of living being more resonant in three years' time.
Greg Jericho is a Guardian columnist and policy director at the Centre for Future Work