Scott Morrison,addressing the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday,says bringing inflation under control will help boost real wages.Credit:James Brickwood
Prime Minister Scott Morrison,campaigning in Victoria,said the 2.4 per cent annual growth was slightly above the 10-year average.
He said if unemployment continued to fall it would help push up wages,while adding that the main issue facing the country was inflation.
“We’ve seen those wages start to rise again,but the challenge is inflation,” he said.
Since the Coalition came to office in September 2013,inflation has climbed by 19.1 per cent while the wage price index has increased by 19.7 per cent.
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Labor leader Anthony Albanese said real wages were now suffering their biggest fall in at least 20 years.
“Under Scott Morrison,real wages are plummeting as the costs of living are skyrocketing. Australian workers are paying the price for a ticket of bad policy and failures,” he told the National Press Club.
The ABS said across the private sector,average wage increases through the March quarter were 3.4 per cent. But just 15 per cent of the population enjoyed the increases.
Senior ANZ economist Catherine Birch said wage result meant the Reserve Bank would press on with a quarter percentage point increase in interest rates at its next meeting rather than a 0.4 percentage point jump.
She said people expecting wages to out-pace inflation any time soon would be disappointed.
“We still expect wage growth to accelerate through 2022 and 2023,although real wages will continue to fall for some time,” she said.
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