Agreements lodged with the FWC in the fortnight to September 9 delivered annual rises of just 2.4% – the lowest in the short history of the Commission's "real-time" bargained wage data – after education deals effectively paying 1.7% a year to more than 10,000 workers dragged down the average increase.
Private sector agreements approved by the FWC in the June quarter paid average annualised wage increases of 2.9%, lifting growth to the fastest pace in two years, but remaining at less than half of the CPI.
The FWC's new leading indicator of bargained wage rises - officially launched today - shows that deals lodged in the first half of last month paid an average increase of 3%, up on those in the most recent DEWR data.
The FWC has promised today to provide "real-time" data on bargained pay rises, with plans to issue fortnightly reports on wage movements in enterprise agreement approval applications, with the first "proposed report" showing a 3.2% average annualised rise in the first two weeks of July, well ahead of the last official departmental number for the March quarter of 2.7%.
The RBA is expecting the near-8% year-end headline inflation spike to only ease to 6.25% in the middle of next year, while it is turning its guns on the ABS wage price index, which it perceives as too narrow.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says that inflation is likely to peak at 7.75% in the December quarter then decline over the next two years, while real wage rises will return next financial year, but the ACTU says the forecast only "deepens" the pay crisis, with the resumption of growth in mid-2024 meaning workers will have suffered four years of going backwards.
The WGEA is urging employers to boost part-time workers' access to management roles and implement gender-neutral leave policies, as gender pay gap research shows women make up less than half of the full-time workforce and are out-earned by men at every age.
NSW's Perrottet Government has raised its 2.5% wage ceiling to 3% next financial year and up to 3.5% in 2023-24, in the face of incomes falling behind consumer price inflation and unions taking industrial action seeking to scrap the cap.
As wage stagnation and cost-of-living issues continue to feature in the federal election campaign, a new report shows Australia has experienced the greatest deceleration in real pay growth in the OECD since 2013, despite its relatively strong employment growth and low unemployment, suggesting that policy and institutional factors are the main culprit, rather than market forces.