Catch-up wage rises since the depths of the pandemic have failed to deliver a much-needed substantial boost to Australians’ pay packets, but evidence is growing the economy has coped with the end of the JobKeeper wage subsidy as employers lift efforts to find new staff.
Public wages, which have been frozen by almost every state and federal government, rose by 0.4 per cent. Public wages grew by 1.5 per cent over the past year, the slowest rate on record. She said there had also been an element of catch-up by employers that had frozen the wages of staff early in the pandemic.Chief economist with CreditorWatch, Harley Dale, said it appeared the deferral of past planned wage rises would continue to outweigh any immediate pressure for workers to get a rise in their take-home pay.
Last week’s federal budget forecast real wages growth to be flat over the next three years, despite the government’s stated aim of driving unemployment below 5 per cent. Indeed chief economist Callam Pickering said job postings across every occupation had increased between the end of JobKeeper and May 14.