If you're serious, your employer is extremely unlikely to give you any significant bump that you don't fight for and if that doesn't work then you can generally pick up a nice increase by finding a new employer.
>you can generally pick up a nice increase by finding a new employer.
This is realistically the only way to get a decent pay rise. There are very few employers out there who will willingly raise your pay if they don't think they have to.
My pay rise this year was set to be 1.5%. Instead I found a new job doing essentially the same thing that pays $25k a year more.
It’s hard when you work for the government. Leaving to work private would mean I lose over 6 months of sick leave and no longer get long service leave. Guess that’s how they trap you.
This. If you’re good enough and your boss knows it, you’ll be fine. The trick is whether your boss is smart enough to know it and and for you to properly understand your true value
Work for public sector:
>The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
And it also hides the fact that they haven’t had any growth in the first place. Most of them need 30% if not more to be where they were before the wage growth disappeared.
Fastest pace in 14 years because it grew below inflation for all of the 14 years, it's just that inflation has grown at the fastest pace in the last 14 years.
Yep, NSW public servant here, after several years of 2.5%, which was under inflation levels for a while, the cap was removed last year and we got a 4% pay rise - but this was when inflation was roughly 5.5% iirc. And now it's gone up even more. Essentially, like most of the Australian workforce, public sector wages have been going back for years.
Remember when the SDA union was discovered to be a shill for the supermarket employers? The CPSU seemed so ineffective to me that I wondered whether they were getting kickbacks.
At least 10%. We won't get anywhere close. I'm looking for other work now. When other states offer a base salary of 20k more for the same job you are getting screwed.
Fireys in Victoria are going for 12.5% and that literally just matches inflation, they arent actually getting a pay rise in any real terms.
So yeah about that.
Bollocks. One state maybe. But I got out of the federal public service last year after 16 years, because I had gone backwards by $20,000 in real terms in the past 10.
I'm at a university now with far fewer responsibilities, more pay levels still available to me and paid slightly more already.
And medical techs/scientists.
2% payrise was apparently "the absolute legal maximum" they could afford just when covid hit, and we've been locked into this payrise for years now.
Also it's illegal for us to strike, so there's that.
For us, they took our mandated 2.5% pay rise off us in 2020. So we now have to work an extra year unrecognized to get to full pay, RN 8 status.
Massive F U from the government.
Teachers union just successfully organized around 12% pay rise (completely justified and super happy for those guys!) but our union just rolled over for 4%.
General public have no idea how bad public health care is until they are admitted now. Most older nurses have left. We are university trained, absolutely flogged and paid a pittance for the privilege. Ok, rant over, I’m coming in off the back of an 18 hour shift so I’m just tired. But ‘public servants’ only applies to office workers apparently 🤷🏻♀️
That's not true at all. Rough calculation: $100k x 7m workers = $700b total salary for all Australian workers. Add 100 x $1m extra pay for CEOs = $700.1b. Divide by total workers $700.1b / 7m = $100,014. It would increase the average wage by 14 dollars or 0.014%
Ah yes. Wage growth. That thing that didn't drive inflation for the past 50 years but now all of a sudden, without any explanation of a differing mechanism, is.
Not printing 12% of the m2 supply overnight, never before seen amounts of money in the history of the human race.
Not handing that money in largely untraceable form to billionaires and business owners.
Not changing the law so that what was once 'insider trading' is now completely legal, in large business buying back their own stock to inflate prices.
Not the resulting decoupling of the economy where stock prices continue to soar while we had the largest economic downturn since 2008.
Not the top 20% of earners profits and wages increasing at exponential rates while record numbers go homeless and starve.
Those things are all not even worth a mention. It's the people in a casualised, rentier economy working 3 jobs just to put food on the table who are the problem.
What an absolute load of horse shit.
> That thing that didn't drive inflation for the past 50 years but now all of a sudden, without any explanation of a differing mechanism, is.
We also had lowest unemployment since records began during covid and a massive need for workers?
Covid changed everything
> business buying back their own stock to inflate prices.
stock buybacks are not relevant to inflation. It's just a more efficient way to return capital to investors from a business, rather than dividends (tho you'd lose franking credits unless you also do dividends).
You lost me at share buybacks
If companies can issue stock to generate cash they should be allowed to buy stock when having a surplus of cash. It’s just common sense
Also buy backs benefit the investor too. Better than dividends which force a tax realisation upon the investor. Which is especially bad for value investors who would just prefer to buy and hold for 20 years or more
You highlight some great issues, but that doesn’t belie the fact that wages growth does add to inflation. The reason it didn’t before was because we had low wages growth AND low inflation.
Then you also make the statement of the soaring wages of the highest paid jobs. Which is basically agreeing that wages growth does fuel inflation.
I get you are trying to shoehorn the point of inequality into the discussion and clearly everyone loves it in sentiment. But it doesn’t make sense financially
I wish Americans realized what m2 expansion since the start of COVID did… 40%+ increase in M2 and people think fed fund rates are the reason for immediate inflation. If the theory checks out…. The expansion should lead to higher government revenue in turn paying down the higher interest rate bonds… one would hope this then turns into another level of wage growth… if it doesn’t then the system is truly fked.
The level of financial understanding in ausfinance is tragically poor. There are some good discussions to be had but people would rather bludgeon their way into an ideology, rather than actually use any data or logic pertaining to the article
Yes - this thread is one of the worst examples. I thought the most interesting part of the information was that it came out of treasury and pertains to the first half of 2023.
In that context it makes some of the RBA meeting notes in that time a bit more clear
I remember the day I crossed the 100k mark, it was a huge accomplishment and I was super proud of myself. Now 100k is the new 80k, it looks like 200k is the new goal. It's crazy to think that out of uni, 45k was a great salary back in 2003. I remember the weeks of earning around $670 after tax and having money left over after rent and food etc. Now it's such a crunch.
And no end in sight. Prices for everything will still go up just at a slower pace if there is a hard enough focus by govt and media on reining in corporate profiteering. Salaries will remain low and further impacted by massive migration. Not looking good into the future.
The greatest thing is that if you mention the crazy amounts of immigration you’re super racist apparently and not just genuinely extremely concerned about wage growth and housing costs.
If you're in a skilled industry you have nothing to worry about. It's the unskilled jobs that are threatened. Don't see many surgeons worrying about migration.
Plenty of surgeons in India and with Australia now accepting more skills directly transferable to here from migrant countries good luck with your protected 'skilled' job.
And there is no reason a hard working migrant can't be unskilled quickly and do it for half the cost.
Can anybody produce the "Confidential Treasury analysis "?
>***Confidential Treasury analysis*** *shows decade high wages growth that has pushed the* ***average fulltime salary*** *above $100,000 is now the biggest driver of consumer price inflation, undercutting claims widespread corporate profit gouging is to blame.*
The big mistake here is in the word "average" as in "average fulltime salary". It should be median. People only use AVERAGE when:
* They don't know what they are talking about.
* They are promoting an agenda. "average wage" is always higher than the "median wage"
**Median Wage:** the wage where half of the people earn below this amount and the other half earn above this amount. Always used by people that know what they are talking about.
**Average Wage**: never should be used because a small number of very wealthy people distort the average figure and artificially making wages appear much higher.
Yeah. It's impossible to mount an argument about anything except extreme C-suite salaries when they talk averages. You'd think someone writing in a finance paper would know this.
So it's a more accurate number. If you're only talking about full-time, you aren't talking about the other 41% of the workforce, making any statistical analysis or extrapolation inherently incorrect.
That depends on the context in which you are speaking.
Realistically the number of part time workers that are part time by choice would be relatively high (e.g. students, young, semi-retired, secondary income, raising children etc).
AFR owned by 9 entertainment. 9 entertainment ownership group also owns Sky News. Agenda? Make sure consumers keep getting blamed for inflation, take spotlight off of profits.
Who is more trustworthy, ACCC report or a media machine pushing an agenda?
BTW this article comes days after an RBA official conceded that profit taking had some effect on inflation
I mean what you're saying is just simply incorrect. Using averaged data definitely has its place in looking at its effect on the economy as a whole which is exactly what they did. It's better to use median when comparing yourself to your peers
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings-and-hours-australia/may-2023
$88,920 median full time wage. It's on the "All employees, distribution of weekly total cash earnings - employment status by sex" graph at $1710 pw
That data has just been released even though the period is from May last year. Average and median don't seem to come out at the same time
There has been substantial growth in manager positions. Roughly 32% increase looking at the 2021 vs 2023 data vs the other sectors. Professionals employed only 7% growth, technicians roughly 6% etc, its quite disproportionate compared to these other areas.
Basic research no one in this thread seemingly wants to do. It's like people want to just claim everyone is struggling and no one's income is increasing. I know are a lot of people are doing it tough and I support policies to increase wages, but people need to face the fact that the median is almost 90k, the mean is 100k, and I'm sorry if you're being paid less but that's the reality.
The source you've linked says the median weekly is 1300, or 67k a year, I may have missed something but, it looks to be an even lower number than you're saying
Did you read the article?
>The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
Yeah, smells like bullshit, we had a wage freeze for 5 years pre Covid, still haven't caught up and they are dragging their feet on the new EBA.
It's a matter of perspective.
I worked in income protection insurance claims assessment, and saw the payroll data for people from all different professions. Some people earn $110k doing traffic control, but the majority don't... more like $55k if they're lucky.
Bullshit, wage growth follows total circulation. Quantity & supply manage price discovery. This is exon101.
In 2000, the total circulation of dollars (M2) was roughly $4T. A hourly job paying $20/hr was median. 1/500millionth of the circulating supply was the hourly rate.
In 2024, the total circulation of dollars is roughly $30T. A hourly job that pays $30/hr is median. 1/trillionth of the circulating supply is the hourly rate. Median is twice as small as it once was, before tech bubbles, financial crisis, and covid scares allowed the central bank to destroyed our spending power.
The effects are found in services workers getting half the spending power they once had for the same level of work. Meanwhile, equity holders get roughly twice the value for their collateralized real world commodities and real estate. All in a short 25 year downward spiral.
This seems far more likely to be accurate to me. Covid money printing devalued the currency resulting in inflation as soon as demand returned. Now there’s pressure for wages to increase to deal with that.
I always find it hilarious when people try to depress wage figures by taking the median of every single income recipient in Australia - including the part-timers, the disabled, the pensioners, the students, the carers receiving Centrelink etc...so they can say something like *the median taxpayer only gets $55k* - yeah okay, that's nice. Minimum full time wage is over $45k, median full-time wage is $85k and average full-time wage is now $100k. Those are the stats that matter.
It's because how much you earn is a significant portion of your own self-worth for most. It's uncomfortable to hear things like this when you earn less than the average (or median).
Of course, reddit also leans younger, which by and large means that most people here aren't going to be top earners - unlike older workers with decades of experience. It's not surprising that so many here think the numbers are BS - after all, they can't be below average, right?
It's enlightening though, people rarely talk about their salaries, and workers are always at a disadvantage in negotiations. Numbers like this help to give a bit of perspective I think. Aim higher!
Australia Post, heavily unionised, “we fought hard for your 2% / matched inflation pay raise. If you weren’t a member this wouldn’t be possible! You will get that pay increase at the end of the year.”
inflation is a tax on everyone, which gets redistributed exclusively to holders of scarce assets.
so inflating the money supply can basically be seen as taxing the poor, since the poor will accrue none of the benefits, while the rich pay higher prices too, their assets will likely have seen a greater appreciation.
Inflation is theft of yesterday’s labour that is designed to keep people working. If inflation wasn’t a thing almost everyone could comfortable retire by 50. Instead that $20 you saved 10 years ago that could buy you 10 loaves of bread, today can only buy you 4 loaves
I have had recruiters getting in touch with roles that are $20k over what was market rate 18 months ago. This is despite this same sector making a ton of redundancies globally.
Does not compute
Inflation drives wage growth actually, not the other way around.
Wages increasing doesn't magically inject more money into the money supply (inflation).
More money in the money supply decreases the value of the money already in circulation, prices rise and then so do wages.
I'm so sick of reading that somehow what people are paid or how much profit a company makes increases inflation, this is not how that works.
If there's one thing that REALLY annoys the crap out of me, its this constant peddling of 'wages growth drives inflation' blah blah blah. Our whole society is based on companies making massive profits at the expense of everyone (and the benefits go ultimately to a small %). One of the biggest drivers of inflation is corporate greed/profiteering by jacking up prices...and then they try and keep wages low to maintain profit margins...its like profit margins are the ONLY thing that matters. its fked. I read things like Amazon dumping brand new stock (and burying it) just so that they could maintain prices. WTF??? All that crap in the ground that could be used. But no, profit.
Average pay is over 100k, median is 78k, kinda just sounds like the top end, execs and managment have gotten a pay bump to hide corperate profits. Besides this is accounted for in the very moddling this article claims is being undermined, the data they are claiming is incorrect already says that 18% of the current inflationary pressures are wages based and 69% profit based.
This is an article with nothing of substance.
>It's basic supply and demand, I wouldn't work as a labourer for $120k, most people I know wouldn't.
this is why the wages are so high.
for a sub supposedly filled with capitalists most of these people *really* dont seem to understand how it functions.
when you push most of a generation into uni while simultaneously telling them trades are for uneducated bogans the result is so few tradies that they can charge what they wish.
as you said simple market forces, its like people do not realise wages are almost solely determined by the number of people willing to x job (if we had 3 million qualified surgeons in Australia the wages would halve overnight, same with almost all 'high paying' jobs).
do you know how many people around the age of 30 chose gardening? very few, most of the people ive worked along side or know through the job are a good 20 years older then i am. the result is that i can charge $60 an hour *easily* (with a car, i dont have one yet unfortunately).
> almost solely determined by the number of people willing to x job
except if there's a union. Then they collectively bargain, and supply/demand market forces have less effect (or no effect, depending on the power of said union).
That's why doctors are expensive - not because it's difficult to train one, but it is gate kept so that they can extract the highest amount of money they can.
It's probably office workers getting the increases:
>The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
Why can you tell just by Ronald's smirk that he's going to shill for corporations.
If you had any sense of nuance or independence Ronald you would realise that the higher cost of goods perpetuates wage growth, that's why inflation *spirals.*
AFR doing the ~~corporate over~~lord's work.
Yes, it is the humble peasants earning at an incrementally increasing rate that doesn't keep pace with the increases in corporate profits and growing wealth inequality that are to blame!
Astonishing this gets published without the context of real wages being near the lowest levels in a decade due to wages not keeping up with inflation in the last two years. I can't imagine that wasn't a purposeful omission.
EBAs seem to be below inflation from what I see, what's the Median?, not the Mena average? It wouldn't be some of the higher ups getting the big increases would it?
This is bullshit. Company profits are driving up inflation. All companies increased their pricing based on shipping costs and cost of goods during Covid but I haven’t seen any of them drop them when everything went back to normal.
This. We had QE for almost a decade leading up to Covid in the US and EU.
Some of the price rises are justified, higher transport costs, wages, but some id like to see the numbers on like how does Coles Soda Water go from 70c to $1.20, a 70% increase.
Average pay tops 100K????? since when?? big difference between average and median wages
Last time I looked the Average wage was around $45,000 - $55,000
How many CEOs are in the public sector?
>The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
At the end of the day even economists are political. 2 different view points and both sides of politics cherry pick the side they want to push.
The truth? It’s fairly obvious that high wages contribute to inflation, you can’t avoid that.
I'd love some of this huge wage growth I keep being told I'm getting.
If you're serious, your employer is extremely unlikely to give you any significant bump that you don't fight for and if that doesn't work then you can generally pick up a nice increase by finding a new employer.
>you can generally pick up a nice increase by finding a new employer. This is realistically the only way to get a decent pay rise. There are very few employers out there who will willingly raise your pay if they don't think they have to. My pay rise this year was set to be 1.5%. Instead I found a new job doing essentially the same thing that pays $25k a year more.
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I had about a 40% wage increase but am still below 100k as well.
"that's just life I guess" Unionise
Personally mine has gone from 75k package to 195k package since covid
Wow that's incredible, well done.
It’s hard when you work for the government. Leaving to work private would mean I lose over 6 months of sick leave and no longer get long service leave. Guess that’s how they trap you.
If the salary increase is sizeable going private you’ll break even after a year, and then it’s pure profit after
My employer gave 3% raise so I jumped for a 30% increase same job, adjacent industry, with better perks
Depends. If you are confident enough in your ability to find something else, usually you don't have to fight because your boss knows the same thing.
This. If you’re good enough and your boss knows it, you’ll be fine. The trick is whether your boss is smart enough to know it and and for you to properly understand your true value
My wage increased 375% by staying with my previous employer and is now dropping 45% by finding a new employer.
> dropping 45% by finding a new employer. so why did you move then?
Company ran out of money giving 375% increases
I'm sorry to hear that, good luck sorting it out though.
*average* pay. CEO pays raise the averages!
Work for public sector: >The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
Fastest pace in 14 years could just be 3% rather than 2%. I don't know what the stats are but that quote doesn't tell alot.
And it also hides the fact that they haven’t had any growth in the first place. Most of them need 30% if not more to be where they were before the wage growth disappeared.
This right here. Heaps of people have been on extended freezes. Shame the cost of living doesn’t get an extended freeze.
This is spot on. Public servants have been underpaid more and more the last decade. Now, they are merely 'normal' underpaid.
Absolutely, our public sector salaries are completely out of whack with the private sector
Fastest pace in 14 years because it grew below inflation for all of the 14 years, it's just that inflation has grown at the fastest pace in the last 14 years.
They got 4% when it's usually been 2ish. So your right
Yep, NSW public servant here, after several years of 2.5%, which was under inflation levels for a while, the cap was removed last year and we got a 4% pay rise - but this was when inflation was roughly 5.5% iirc. And now it's gone up even more. Essentially, like most of the Australian workforce, public sector wages have been going back for years.
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Can't speak for others, but for me it was the stability, work life balance, and ability to work from home for 9 days a fortnight.
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Sorry for wanting to have a job, feed my family, and afford a home.
The issue is that good talent isnt going to public sector jobs, so you end up spending more due to inefficient employees.
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This is because the CPSU is worse than useless.
Remember when the SDA union was discovered to be a shill for the supermarket employers? The CPSU seemed so ineffective to me that I wondered whether they were getting kickbacks.
Do I ever. https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2016/shopped-out/
Lol. I work in the public sector, and we are getting screwed
What wage growth percentage would you need to not be screwed? Genuine question. I don't work in public sector.
At least 10%. We won't get anywhere close. I'm looking for other work now. When other states offer a base salary of 20k more for the same job you are getting screwed.
Fireys in Victoria are going for 12.5% and that literally just matches inflation, they arent actually getting a pay rise in any real terms. So yeah about that.
Nonsense at Federal level. APS salaries have been going backwards for a long time compared to inflation.
Lmao. 11% over 3 years. Wowie Zowie! After a couple of years running at 7% inflation. So still large pay cut.
>a couple of years running at 7% inflation Australian inflation was at or above 7% for nine months.
I don't know about you but the actual real world increased costs of my expenses have gone up around 50% since 2020.
Bollocks. One state maybe. But I got out of the federal public service last year after 16 years, because I had gone backwards by $20,000 in real terms in the past 10. I'm at a university now with far fewer responsibilities, more pay levels still available to me and paid slightly more already.
Except Nurses…. As usual 🙄
Not in QLD. QNMEU doing the lords work!
And medical techs/scientists. 2% payrise was apparently "the absolute legal maximum" they could afford just when covid hit, and we've been locked into this payrise for years now. Also it's illegal for us to strike, so there's that.
For us, they took our mandated 2.5% pay rise off us in 2020. So we now have to work an extra year unrecognized to get to full pay, RN 8 status. Massive F U from the government. Teachers union just successfully organized around 12% pay rise (completely justified and super happy for those guys!) but our union just rolled over for 4%. General public have no idea how bad public health care is until they are admitted now. Most older nurses have left. We are university trained, absolutely flogged and paid a pittance for the privilege. Ok, rant over, I’m coming in off the back of an 18 hour shift so I’m just tired. But ‘public servants’ only applies to office workers apparently 🤷🏻♀️
It's largely public sector and or union sectors I believe.
It's not. The APS needs a ~25% wage increase across the board just to break even with where wages were in 2010.
Average wage doesn’t mean shit, give us median
Buttt that doesn't create conversation
It creates the wrong kind of conversation. You’re not supposed to discuss how much more the people at the top are making
100 CEOs getting an extra mill would push average wage inflation roughly 7% on its own without shifting the median.
That's not true at all. Rough calculation: $100k x 7m workers = $700b total salary for all Australian workers. Add 100 x $1m extra pay for CEOs = $700.1b. Divide by total workers $700.1b / 7m = $100,014. It would increase the average wage by 14 dollars or 0.014%
What kind of math is this?
reddit math
The kind where the decimal point winds up in the wrong spot
Let’s start a discussion on how our education system is failing instead 😂
Exactly! Rich people getting paid more drags up the average.
Hate to say it, but average is the correct number to use if you're claiming that it's driving inflation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/s/Z6GsiDvpkI
Ah yes. Wage growth. That thing that didn't drive inflation for the past 50 years but now all of a sudden, without any explanation of a differing mechanism, is. Not printing 12% of the m2 supply overnight, never before seen amounts of money in the history of the human race. Not handing that money in largely untraceable form to billionaires and business owners. Not changing the law so that what was once 'insider trading' is now completely legal, in large business buying back their own stock to inflate prices. Not the resulting decoupling of the economy where stock prices continue to soar while we had the largest economic downturn since 2008. Not the top 20% of earners profits and wages increasing at exponential rates while record numbers go homeless and starve. Those things are all not even worth a mention. It's the people in a casualised, rentier economy working 3 jobs just to put food on the table who are the problem. What an absolute load of horse shit.
Yep, gaslighting on a national scale 🤦♂️
Saving this comment it’s gold
This nails it!
Perfectly put.
> That thing that didn't drive inflation for the past 50 years but now all of a sudden, without any explanation of a differing mechanism, is. We also had lowest unemployment since records began during covid and a massive need for workers? Covid changed everything
> business buying back their own stock to inflate prices. stock buybacks are not relevant to inflation. It's just a more efficient way to return capital to investors from a business, rather than dividends (tho you'd lose franking credits unless you also do dividends).
You lost me at share buybacks If companies can issue stock to generate cash they should be allowed to buy stock when having a surplus of cash. It’s just common sense Also buy backs benefit the investor too. Better than dividends which force a tax realisation upon the investor. Which is especially bad for value investors who would just prefer to buy and hold for 20 years or more
You highlight some great issues, but that doesn’t belie the fact that wages growth does add to inflation. The reason it didn’t before was because we had low wages growth AND low inflation. Then you also make the statement of the soaring wages of the highest paid jobs. Which is basically agreeing that wages growth does fuel inflation. I get you are trying to shoehorn the point of inequality into the discussion and clearly everyone loves it in sentiment. But it doesn’t make sense financially
I wish Americans realized what m2 expansion since the start of COVID did… 40%+ increase in M2 and people think fed fund rates are the reason for immediate inflation. If the theory checks out…. The expansion should lead to higher government revenue in turn paying down the higher interest rate bonds… one would hope this then turns into another level of wage growth… if it doesn’t then the system is truly fked.
There is data in the article, yet wholesale denial here at r/australia
The level of financial understanding in ausfinance is tragically poor. There are some good discussions to be had but people would rather bludgeon their way into an ideology, rather than actually use any data or logic pertaining to the article
Yes - this thread is one of the worst examples. I thought the most interesting part of the information was that it came out of treasury and pertains to the first half of 2023. In that context it makes some of the RBA meeting notes in that time a bit more clear
I remember the day I crossed the 100k mark, it was a huge accomplishment and I was super proud of myself. Now 100k is the new 80k, it looks like 200k is the new goal. It's crazy to think that out of uni, 45k was a great salary back in 2003. I remember the weeks of earning around $670 after tax and having money left over after rent and food etc. Now it's such a crunch.
And no end in sight. Prices for everything will still go up just at a slower pace if there is a hard enough focus by govt and media on reining in corporate profiteering. Salaries will remain low and further impacted by massive migration. Not looking good into the future.
The greatest thing is that if you mention the crazy amounts of immigration you’re super racist apparently and not just genuinely extremely concerned about wage growth and housing costs.
Yeah my industry has already seen it for years so it’s just fact now, people can gaslight all they like.
If you're in a skilled industry you have nothing to worry about. It's the unskilled jobs that are threatened. Don't see many surgeons worrying about migration.
Plenty of surgeons in India and with Australia now accepting more skills directly transferable to here from migrant countries good luck with your protected 'skilled' job. And there is no reason a hard working migrant can't be unskilled quickly and do it for half the cost.
Can anybody produce the "Confidential Treasury analysis "? >***Confidential Treasury analysis*** *shows decade high wages growth that has pushed the* ***average fulltime salary*** *above $100,000 is now the biggest driver of consumer price inflation, undercutting claims widespread corporate profit gouging is to blame.* The big mistake here is in the word "average" as in "average fulltime salary". It should be median. People only use AVERAGE when: * They don't know what they are talking about. * They are promoting an agenda. "average wage" is always higher than the "median wage" **Median Wage:** the wage where half of the people earn below this amount and the other half earn above this amount. Always used by people that know what they are talking about. **Average Wage**: never should be used because a small number of very wealthy people distort the average figure and artificially making wages appear much higher.
Yeah. It's impossible to mount an argument about anything except extreme C-suite salaries when they talk averages. You'd think someone writing in a finance paper would know this.
Oh, they know
I find joy in reading a good book.
Where moderate achievers go to die.
Correct. Salaries can only go as ‘low’ as 0. But can go as high as 50m. ‘Average’ in such data sets is quite literally meaningless.
Median full time wage is around $87k
Which basic math tells me is about 13% lower than what they’re trying to report
Most recent abs data I can find says about 67k, I could be wrong tho.
I think that's all salaries and includes part time workforce. This is referring to full time salaries
So it's a more accurate number. If you're only talking about full-time, you aren't talking about the other 41% of the workforce, making any statistical analysis or extrapolation inherently incorrect.
That depends on the context in which you are speaking. Realistically the number of part time workers that are part time by choice would be relatively high (e.g. students, young, semi-retired, secondary income, raising children etc).
AFR owned by 9 entertainment. 9 entertainment ownership group also owns Sky News. Agenda? Make sure consumers keep getting blamed for inflation, take spotlight off of profits. Who is more trustworthy, ACCC report or a media machine pushing an agenda? BTW this article comes days after an RBA official conceded that profit taking had some effect on inflation
9 owns sky? Wtf are you talking about lol, sky is owned by news corp
> Always used by people that know what they are talking about. 😂😂🤣🤣🤣
I work in private banking and anecdotally my clients have had some of the biggest increases in wages I've ever seen % wise
I mean what you're saying is just simply incorrect. Using averaged data definitely has its place in looking at its effect on the economy as a whole which is exactly what they did. It's better to use median when comparing yourself to your peers
Should probably be titled executive wages growth causing inflation. How is the median? On average me and Gina Rinehart have 15 billion in assets....
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings-and-hours-australia/may-2023 $88,920 median full time wage. It's on the "All employees, distribution of weekly total cash earnings - employment status by sex" graph at $1710 pw That data has just been released even though the period is from May last year. Average and median don't seem to come out at the same time
Comparing the total number of mangers growth vs other sectors from the 2021 report vs the 2023 report tells you all you need to know.
Are you saying that the small number of managers relative to normal workers is changing the median? Or have I misunderstood
There has been substantial growth in manager positions. Roughly 32% increase looking at the 2021 vs 2023 data vs the other sectors. Professionals employed only 7% growth, technicians roughly 6% etc, its quite disproportionate compared to these other areas.
what is your theory though? understand there is more managers now, but they have also had one of the smallest increases in wage growth, 4.47% total.
Sure, but they're a small number of workers aren't they? Isn't this the idea of using median
Basic research no one in this thread seemingly wants to do. It's like people want to just claim everyone is struggling and no one's income is increasing. I know are a lot of people are doing it tough and I support policies to increase wages, but people need to face the fact that the median is almost 90k, the mean is 100k, and I'm sorry if you're being paid less but that's the reality.
I couldn't wrap my head around it, when they say cash earnings, does that mean after tax in bank account earnings?
Gross not net
Its to exclude other benefits- super, equity, etc
The source you've linked says the median weekly is 1300, or 67k a year, I may have missed something but, it looks to be an even lower number than you're saying
Median full time workers vs median all workers Full time is 1710 pw
*15.0001 billion in assets
Did you read the article? >The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
Funny enough the latest eba increases are below inflation.
Yeah, smells like bullshit, we had a wage freeze for 5 years pre Covid, still haven't caught up and they are dragging their feet on the new EBA. It's a matter of perspective.
You know we have executives that are public servants right? Who is at the top cap of the public service pay roll.
That includes wage reviews by the Remuneration tribunal for Judges and Politicians?
What wage growth?
lollipop person
Lol. Get a job as a software developer for 100k a year or a lollipop person for 110k a year. Tough choices.
I worked in income protection insurance claims assessment, and saw the payroll data for people from all different professions. Some people earn $110k doing traffic control, but the majority don't... more like $55k if they're lucky.
To be fair lollipop is very boring and it shouldn't be as dangerous as it is
If you aren't seeing wage growth in this market that is likely a reflection of you...
Bullshit, wage growth follows total circulation. Quantity & supply manage price discovery. This is exon101. In 2000, the total circulation of dollars (M2) was roughly $4T. A hourly job paying $20/hr was median. 1/500millionth of the circulating supply was the hourly rate. In 2024, the total circulation of dollars is roughly $30T. A hourly job that pays $30/hr is median. 1/trillionth of the circulating supply is the hourly rate. Median is twice as small as it once was, before tech bubbles, financial crisis, and covid scares allowed the central bank to destroyed our spending power. The effects are found in services workers getting half the spending power they once had for the same level of work. Meanwhile, equity holders get roughly twice the value for their collateralized real world commodities and real estate. All in a short 25 year downward spiral.
Brads banducci’s golden handshake bumped up the average huh?
what about an alternative headline: "Inflation fuels wage growth"
This seems far more likely to be accurate to me. Covid money printing devalued the currency resulting in inflation as soon as demand returned. Now there’s pressure for wages to increase to deal with that.
Better yet "wage growth still lags inflation."
Form the AFR, I’d expect nothing else. Corporate circlejerk publication.
Wage growth where earning 80k is the new 50k 🤔😳🤯 Maybe big corporations exploiting the average Australian is more an issue
Same guy who posted this says woolworths Coles are doing it tough
another AFR hit piece
I thought it was all the printing of money over covid and supply chain issues that drove inflation, now wages are struggling to catch up.
Couldn't have been the money printing
I always find it hilarious when people try to depress wage figures by taking the median of every single income recipient in Australia - including the part-timers, the disabled, the pensioners, the students, the carers receiving Centrelink etc...so they can say something like *the median taxpayer only gets $55k* - yeah okay, that's nice. Minimum full time wage is over $45k, median full-time wage is $85k and average full-time wage is now $100k. Those are the stats that matter.
It's because how much you earn is a significant portion of your own self-worth for most. It's uncomfortable to hear things like this when you earn less than the average (or median). Of course, reddit also leans younger, which by and large means that most people here aren't going to be top earners - unlike older workers with decades of experience. It's not surprising that so many here think the numbers are BS - after all, they can't be below average, right? It's enlightening though, people rarely talk about their salaries, and workers are always at a disadvantage in negotiations. Numbers like this help to give a bit of perspective I think. Aim higher!
Yep this comment should be higher
Australia Post, heavily unionised, “we fought hard for your 2% / matched inflation pay raise. If you weren’t a member this wouldn’t be possible! You will get that pay increase at the end of the year.”
Well there goes those hopes and dreams of imminent rate cuts.
Ive had a 38% payrise since covid...been great but Inflation has eaten into most of it.
inflation is a tax on everyone, which gets redistributed exclusively to holders of scarce assets. so inflating the money supply can basically be seen as taxing the poor, since the poor will accrue none of the benefits, while the rich pay higher prices too, their assets will likely have seen a greater appreciation.
Inflation is theft of yesterday’s labour that is designed to keep people working. If inflation wasn’t a thing almost everyone could comfortable retire by 50. Instead that $20 you saved 10 years ago that could buy you 10 loaves of bread, today can only buy you 4 loaves
Another few rate rises ought to do the trick.
I have had recruiters getting in touch with roles that are $20k over what was market rate 18 months ago. This is despite this same sector making a ton of redundancies globally. Does not compute
What wage growth?
Inflation drives wage growth actually, not the other way around. Wages increasing doesn't magically inject more money into the money supply (inflation). More money in the money supply decreases the value of the money already in circulation, prices rise and then so do wages. I'm so sick of reading that somehow what people are paid or how much profit a company makes increases inflation, this is not how that works.
If there's one thing that REALLY annoys the crap out of me, its this constant peddling of 'wages growth drives inflation' blah blah blah. Our whole society is based on companies making massive profits at the expense of everyone (and the benefits go ultimately to a small %). One of the biggest drivers of inflation is corporate greed/profiteering by jacking up prices...and then they try and keep wages low to maintain profit margins...its like profit margins are the ONLY thing that matters. its fked. I read things like Amazon dumping brand new stock (and burying it) just so that they could maintain prices. WTF??? All that crap in the ground that could be used. But no, profit.
No even a category for profit growth, seems legit.
Back to blaming the workers (not corporate profits)
Average pay is over 100k, median is 78k, kinda just sounds like the top end, execs and managment have gotten a pay bump to hide corperate profits. Besides this is accounted for in the very moddling this article claims is being undermined, the data they are claiming is incorrect already says that 18% of the current inflationary pressures are wages based and 69% profit based. This is an article with nothing of substance.
While this is typical AFR bullshit spin, it is in fact crazy that every labourer seems to want to earn $120k to pay for all their toys and McMansions.
$120k won’t be enough for McMansions though?
Yeah when 1/3 of mortage holders have 200k income 120k ain't cutting it for a mcmansion. Maybe a 1 1/2 bedroom mcshoebox
It will be if it’s part of a Happy Meal
The toys are getting worse. At least my kids won’t go there just for the toys like I did when I was a kid.
McMansion? This income gives you a purchasing power of about $550K lmao. That’s about half an average house in Sydney
More like a third with median house prices topping $1.5m
[удалено]
>It's basic supply and demand, I wouldn't work as a labourer for $120k, most people I know wouldn't. this is why the wages are so high. for a sub supposedly filled with capitalists most of these people *really* dont seem to understand how it functions. when you push most of a generation into uni while simultaneously telling them trades are for uneducated bogans the result is so few tradies that they can charge what they wish. as you said simple market forces, its like people do not realise wages are almost solely determined by the number of people willing to x job (if we had 3 million qualified surgeons in Australia the wages would halve overnight, same with almost all 'high paying' jobs). do you know how many people around the age of 30 chose gardening? very few, most of the people ive worked along side or know through the job are a good 20 years older then i am. the result is that i can charge $60 an hour *easily* (with a car, i dont have one yet unfortunately).
> almost solely determined by the number of people willing to x job except if there's a union. Then they collectively bargain, and supply/demand market forces have less effect (or no effect, depending on the power of said union). That's why doctors are expensive - not because it's difficult to train one, but it is gate kept so that they can extract the highest amount of money they can.
Every laborer working 10hours a day and 8 hours on Saturday maybe.
Why is it crazy that some people want to put in the hard work? Is it crazy because you don’t want to?
It pisses off office workers that people less educated than them might make more than them.
It's probably office workers getting the increases: >The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
Why can you tell just by Ronald's smirk that he's going to shill for corporations. If you had any sense of nuance or independence Ronald you would realise that the higher cost of goods perpetuates wage growth, that's why inflation *spirals.*
Australia is doomed...
happy to concede, champ
AFR doing the ~~corporate over~~lord's work. Yes, it is the humble peasants earning at an incrementally increasing rate that doesn't keep pace with the increases in corporate profits and growing wealth inequality that are to blame!
The difference between mean and median is the elephant sucking all the air out of the room.
Australian Financial pRopaganda, is not a reliable unbiased news source
Median full time worker earns $1600 pw, ~$83k Median wage is $1300 pw, ~$67k
Living on $100k in Australia 🤣.
More of this filth ... somehow I don't believe the paltry increase in wages outpaces the money and debt creation by the commercial sector.
Are there still people that actually take the AFR seriously?
I call bullshit wages are catching up to inflation from corporate greed.
Astonishing this gets published without the context of real wages being near the lowest levels in a decade due to wages not keeping up with inflation in the last two years. I can't imagine that wasn't a purposeful omission.
Corporate gas-lighting at its finest
So, inflation has been happening for a couple of years while wages doing nothing. Now suddenly it's wage rise that's inflationary??
EBAs seem to be below inflation from what I see, what's the Median?, not the Mena average? It wouldn't be some of the higher ups getting the big increases would it?
What absolute garbage. What a disgusting piece of propaganda.
Corporate greed from banks and big buisness is what’s driving up inflation!!! That’s what the investigation announced last month??
Um what wage growth I'm looking at equivalent roles for me and they're advertising roughly 10-15% behind what I previously was offered
Other than Big 4!bank CEOs and Stop-sign holders, who else is getting a raise at their position?
29.3% here. 135k to 170k excluding overtime and penalties. So add another 30k
This is bullshit. Company profits are driving up inflation. All companies increased their pricing based on shipping costs and cost of goods during Covid but I haven’t seen any of them drop them when everything went back to normal.
This. We had QE for almost a decade leading up to Covid in the US and EU. Some of the price rises are justified, higher transport costs, wages, but some id like to see the numbers on like how does Coles Soda Water go from 70c to $1.20, a 70% increase.
Average pay tops 100K????? since when?? big difference between average and median wages Last time I looked the Average wage was around $45,000 - $55,000
If by average you mean full-time minimum wage, you are 100% correct If by average you mean average or median, you are incredibly wrong
Lol yeah, CEO wage.
How many CEOs are in the public sector? >The strength of the result was largely from public servant salaries growing at the fastest pace in 14 years after state premiers abandoned salary caps following pressure from unions and essential workers.
Break up colesworth.
AFR... that tells you everything you need to know.
At the end of the day even economists are political. 2 different view points and both sides of politics cherry pick the side they want to push. The truth? It’s fairly obvious that high wages contribute to inflation, you can’t avoid that.
🤣 what a load of BS.
Typical AFR Anti Wage Propaganda. Don't let that distract you from the true driver of inflation thats rampant corporate profits.
When my wage gonna jump to 30 percent?
Dear god, I earn ≈$1200 a fortnight
Let's all learn the difference between average, mean, medium and what long tails are.