The immigration deluge has worked to kill Australian wage growth, with the June quarter wage price index (WPI) rising a tepid 0.8% for the quarter and by 3.6% over the year.
The private sector rose 0.8% and the public sector rose 0.7%.
The result badly missed analysts’ expectations of a 1.0% rise over the quarter.
The result will also appease the RBA, which had forecast a peak of 4.1% annual wage growth in the September quarter:
It also follows weaker than expected growth in enterprise agreement wages:
The good news is that real wages remained steady over the June quarter. The bad news is that they are currently running at March 2009 levels, meaning 14 years of wage gains have evaporated:
This data has killed concern that Australia is experiencing a wage-price spiral.
In turn, the RBA should remain at hold at next month’s monetary policy meeting.
