Workers’ wage growth accelerated at a slightly weaker than expected pace in the June quarter even as employers scrambled to hire staff in a tight labour market.
The wage price index for the June quarter rose 0.8% for the three months and 3.6% from a year earlier. Economists had forecast wages would increase 0.9% for the quarter and at an annual clip of 3.7%.
Details on wage costs are one of the final pieces of the June quarter economic puzzle and show how employees were faring in terms of salary gains amidst cost-of-living increases.
Ahead of today’s release of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, treasurer Jim Chalmers was talking up the prospect that wages might finally be increasing faster than headline inflation. In the June quarter, consumer prices rose 0.8%. In the end, the claim was slightly premature.
Some business groups and the Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe had warned of the potential for a wage-price spiral if workers were given pay rises to keep pace with inflation.
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Wages rose at annual rate of 3.6% in the June quarter, slightly down on the March. Vale wage-price spiral… (Source @absstat) pic.twitter.com/xwMSHaUeZU
— @phannam@mastodon.green (@p_hannam) August 15, 2023
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