The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released its Wage Price Index for the March quarter of 2016, which revealed a continuation of soft wages growth across the economy, with annual wages growth also tracking at the lowest rate in the series’ 18 year history (see below charts).
According to the ABS, wages grew by 0.41% (both s.a. and trend) in the March quarter. Private sector wages grew by 0.41% (both s.a. and trend) over the quarter, whereas public sector wages grew by 0.48% (s.a.) and 0.56% (trend).
Over the year, total wages grew by just 2.07% (s.a.) and 1.99% (trend), with the private sector experiencing 1.91% (both s.a. and trend) growth and the public sector 2.46% (both s.a. and trend) growth.
You can see from the next chart, which plots non-seasonally adjusted wages growth on an annual basis (in order to reduce volatility), that wages growth has softened everywhere, but is especially weak in Queensland (1.9%):
In a similar vein, wages growth has weakened across most industries, with the exception of the financial parasites (+2.6%) and Healthcare (+2.6%), with yesterday’s hero, mining (+1.4 YoY%) and the real estate parasites (+1.3%), suffering the biggest downturns along with construction (+1.6% YoY):
Once again, there’s little joy in this release for workers, with wages growth continuing on the slow path, which will make paying-off household’s record debt loads all the more difficult.
