Real wages boost for workers, but costs might worry RBA
Workers have benefited from the most powerful annual growth in real wages for more than five years, but the reserve bank will be awake if labor costs cause inflation to be fired again.
The Australian Statistics Office said on Wednesday that the wages grew slightly above expectations by 3.4 percent in June.
The annual figure was fixed from the first quarter, but inflation increased to 1.3 percent since inflation decreased to 2.1 percent in March period.
The wage price index increased by 0.8 percent for three months in June, while the growth became stable after the peak at 4.2 percent at the end of 2023.
ABS Price President Michelle Marquardt said that a smaller part of the jobs achieved big wage increases compared to a year ago and contributed to a decrease in total wage growth.
Public sector wages increased by one percent in the quarter and leaving behind increases for an average increase of 0.8 percent for workers in the private sector.
“When the increase in this quarter in the public sector was combined with regularly planned wage increases, Marquardt reflected reimbursement increases from the recent state -based business agreements,” Marquardt said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said it was a positive result.
“One of the most important goals of our economic plan is to make Australians earn more and to protect more than they have gained,” he said to journalists in Canberra.
“And today these numbers show that we have made a significant progress.”
The wage growth reduced the cash rate to 3.6 percent, while the reserve bank, which was published on Tuesday, was much higher than the estimation of the Bank.
NAB Markets President Economy Tapas Strickland said that the data on Wednesday will have little effect on the Central Bank’s next interest rate decision in September, but the wage figures will gain more importance.
The reason for this was that the central bank’s personnel economists reduced their assumptions to 0.7 percent, ie the rate of release of wages without adding the price increase without adding to inflation.
“In general, a complete (consumer price index) shows that RBA’s ongoing decisions are still necessary with national accounts, and yesterday’s NAB Business survey is still a little careful about cost trends,” he said.
This will exclude a deduction at the next meeting of the Reserve Bank before the release of the next three -month inflation in September.
Following the deduction on Tuesday, the Central Bank Governor Michele Bullock said that the board of directors will “meet a meeting ve and closely follow the upcoming data bulletins to ensure that the economy continues to progress in accordance with the goals of the economy.
CBA senior economist Belinda Allen expects RBA to wait until November before cutting it again, but it may vary depending on how the data develops.
“The governor did not retreat with the withdrawal. Inflation seems to be under control, so any acceleration of the cutting cycle should be directed with a deterioration in the labor market.”
He said that the most important data readings before the next meeting will be published on Thursday and September, and the economic growth figures for the June quarter will be published on 3 September.
Australian Associated Press is a beating heart of Australian news. AAP has been the only independent national Newswire of Australia and has been providing reliable and fast news content to the media industry, the government and the corporate sector for 85 years. We inform Australia.
