Recently a case was made that the Reserve Bank and the Albanese government did not deserve to be blamed for the deterioration in Australian living standards and real wages, due to the fact that similar trends were present throughout much of the developed world.
While there is certainly truth to the idea that other advanced economies saw falls in living standards following the peak driven by pandemic-driven stimulus, data from the OECD reveals a major divergence between Australia and most of its rivals.
In Australia, real household disposable income per capita is only marginally removed from where it was a decade ago.
