As expected, Treasurer Jim Chalmers was quick to spin Wednesday’s poor wage growth data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as a resounding success:
The reality is that annual real wages have fallen for two consecutive quarters, tracking 7.2% below their June 2020 peak:
Australian real wages are now tracking at mid-2010 levels.
This makes a laughing stock of Chalmers’ claim that “annual nominal wages have hit ‘four for four’, growing by at least 4% for the last four quarters – which never happened once under the Liberals”.
Worse for Chalmers, employee households experienced a 6.2% rise in their cost-of-living in the year to June 2024, according to the ABS:
Therefore, the real incomes of employee households fell more than suggested by CPI inflation.
Australia’s private sector wage growth also continues to contract.
As noted by Michelle Marquardt, ABS head of prices statistics: “The June quarter 2024 private sector rise was the lowest rise for a June quarter since 2021 and the equal lowest rise for any quarter since December quarter 2021”.
Finally, independent economist Tarric Brooker noted the following on Twitter (X):
“Since bottoming in Q1 2023, real wages have grown by 0.23%. If real wages continue on this growth trajectory, they will hit pre-Covid levels in the early 2050s”:
Treasurer Jim Chalmers needs to learn when to keep his mouth shut.
Wage growth outcomes under the Albanese government are no cause for celebration.
