The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released its Wage Price Index for the March quarter of 2014, which revealed a continuation of soft wages growth across the economy, with annual wages growth also tracking at the lowest rate in the series’ 16-year history (see below charts).
According to the ABS, wages grew by 0.7% (s.a.) and 0.7% (trend) in the March quarter, in line with analyst’s expectations. Private sector wages grew by 0.7% (s.a.) and 0.6% (trend) over the quarter, whereas public sector wages grew by 0.8% (both s.a. and trend). Over the year, total wages grew by 2.6% (s.a.) and 2.6% (trend), with the private sector experiencing 2.6% (s.a.) and 2.5% (trend) growth and the public sector 2.9% growth (both s.a. and trend).
You can see from the next chart, which plots non-seasonally adjusted wages growth on a 6-month moving average basis (in order to reduce volatility), that wages growth has softened pretty much everywhere:
In a similar vein, wages growth has weakened across most industries, including mining:
Overall, there’s not much joy in this release for workers, with wages growth continuing on a slow path. But at least the situation did not deteriorate further over the March quarter.
