Australian workers have received all-time low annual wage rises over the financial year to June 2021. That is according to an article published this week by Independent Australia.
Australia has always rewarded workers with steady wage increases year on year as industrial harmony and improving productivity have generated ever-rising company profits. Until 2013, that is, when the current right wing Coalition Government came to power.
In the eight years since then, wage rises have fallen to a fresh all-time low six times, the latest at an appalling 1.71 per cent, according to last week’s data.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) began recording wage levels across Australia in 1997 [File 6345.0 table 1]. From then until 2013, the annual rise varied between 2.84 and 4.16 per cent. The average was a healthy 3.54 per cent.
This compared well with other countries. Over same period, wage rises averaged 3.4 per cent in Sweden, 3.2 in Britain, 2.4 in Italy, 2.3 in Canada and the Netherlands and 1.3 in Switzerland.
That has now shifted dramatically. The Government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison has seen wages tumble as profits have soared.
Majority of Australian workers much poorer
The other variable which serves to advantage employers and disadvantage workers is inflation, which is rising alarmingly under current economic mismanagement. Inflation to June was 3.85 per cent, which means the average real wage rise – pay increases minus inflation – was actually negative 2.15 per cent over the year to June.
We know that many high salary earners received strong pay rises over that period, so the vast majority of workers suffered a substantial decline in their real disposable income and standard of living. Company profits, according to the ABS, have increased by an average of 8.1 per cent over the last eight years.
Global comparisons
This is yet another area where Australia has tumbled from at or near the top of all developed countries before this incompetent regime took office to among the losers today.
Trading Economics has current wage and inflation data for 32 developed OECD members. Twelve of these generated real wage rises – increased pay rate minus inflation rate – above two per cent. Not bad. Another nine managed real wage rises below two per cent. That leaves eleven economies whose workers lost pay in real terms over the last year. Of these, Australia was among the bottom four.
The United States ranked an impressive sixth in the OECD with wage rises of 4.7 per cent after inflation.
Record low wage rises as profits soar
This is not the inevitable result of the pandemic or a global economic downturn, or any other external factor. It is the outcome of specific decisions by the Morrison Government to shift wealth and income from the poor and middle income earners – the majority of Australians – to the rich corporations in Australia and beyond. Mostly beyond.
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The article is available in full here for free:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/morrison-delivers-for-foreign-corporations-lowest-wage-rise-on-record,15432
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“Alan Austin is a great Australian journalist and,
I think, a pirate. I steal Alan Austin’s findings all the time.”
~ Jordan Shanks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtV-2X4BjQI