Australian wages should have declined even further

Australian real wages fell by a record 7.3% between mid-2020 and the September quarter of 2023. They have since recovered by a paltry 1.3%, leaving real wages 6.0% lower than their peak as of mid-2025.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) forecast in its November Statement of Monetary Policy (SoMP) that real wages would remain 5.8% below their peak, still tracking where they were at the end of 2011.

If the RBA’s forecasts are correct, this means that Australians would have experienced zero growth in their real wages in 16 years.

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About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.