Aussie wages grow 3.1 per cent, but fall short of soaring rate of inflation
The average Aussie wage has increased 3.1 per cent over the past 12 months, falling well below the rate of inflation over the same period.
Fresh data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed the Wage Price Index - or WPI - grew 1 per cent in the September quarter and 3.1 per cent on an annual basis.
The data largely beat market expectations, but revealed a 4.2 per cent gap between wages and inflation, which is currently tracking at an annual rate of 7.3 per cent.
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Aussie wages are growing - but inflation is eroding any gains made by pay rises. The Age/Bloomberg
Real wages are generally defined as a person's purchasing power, relative to their costs.
In basic dollar terms, a person may be earning more but any increase in their income has been eroded by the rising prices of goods and services.
Program Manager of Prices at the ABS Michelle Marquardt said the three-month increase of 1 per cent was the highest recorded in a decade.
"This is the highest quarterly growth in hourly wages recorded since March quarter 2012," Marquardt said.
"In seasonally adjusted terms, this growth was primarily driven by increases in wages for the private sector which grew at twice the rate of wages in the public sector (1.2 per cent compared to 0.6 per cent)."
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A person may be earning more but any increase in their income has been eroded by the rising prices of goods and services. AAP
She said recent changes to the minimum wage and record-low levels of unemployment contributed to the sharp uptick.
"Labour market pressures in the private sector combined with the largest Fair Work Commission award increase in more than a decade saw rises in both the size of average wage changes and the proportion of private sector jobs recording a wage change," she said.
"The average size of hourly wage increase for those jobs where the wage rate moved was 4.3 per cent, up from 2.9 per cent in the September quarter 2021.
"Nearly half (46.4 per cent) of private sector jobs recorded a change in their hourly wage rate this quarter compared to around one third (33.9 per cent) in the same quarter last year."
The highest annual growth in wages was recorded in the retail industry, while the education and training industry recorded the lowest annual growth.
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