The Grattan Institute has published an interesting fact sheet on earnings across Australia:
According to Grattan, “the typical full-time Australian worker actually earns $84,628, and the typical Australian worker earns just $63,041”. Moreover, only “24 per cent had taxable incomes higher than $80,000” and “just 3.5 per cent of taxpayers had taxable incomes” above the top marginal tax rate of $180,000 a year in 2018-19.
Separate data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the median Australian earned $62,400 in the year to August 2021, with the top 75% earning $94,120 and the top 90% earning $137,540:
The fact that the median full-time Australian earned $84,600 makes a mockery of the Grattan Institute’s latest recommendation for an uncapped wage floor for temporary skilled migrants of $70,000, which is $14,600 below the median full-time wage of Australians (which includes unskilled workers):
Memo to Grattan: $70,000 is by definition not “high-wage”, since it is well below the median.
According to Grattan, this $70,000 ‘skilled’ wage floor should also apply to migrants of any age in any occupation:
Open slather access to low-wage temporary ‘skilled’ migrants.
Thus, Grattan’s low wage floor would see older migrants with years of experience being used to undercut local workers.
Skilled visa holders should be paid well above the population median. Otherwise they can’t be considered genuinely skilled.
At a minimum, the wage floor for skilled visa holders (both permanent and temporary) should be set at the 75th percentile of earnings ($94,120 in August 2021 – see table above). This would ensure that skilled migrants are used to alleviate genuine skills shortages, not imported en masse to undercut local wages and conditions, as recommended by Grattan.
