Most Australian workers are missing out on significant wage rises despite an increasingly tight labour market, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The data reveals most of the big pay increases since the global financial crisis have been concentrated in industries such as the resources sector, which only account for a fraction of the nation\u2019s labour force.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fears of an inflationary blowout in wages intensified after the unemployment rate dipped below 5% in December, indicating the nation is close to full employment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But the ABS analysis of earnings shows that although workers in mining, IT and utilities have won pay rises of up to 15% since 2008, they account for less than 5% of the workforce.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Over the same period, those employed in health and retail \u2013 who comprise almost 23% of all workers \u2013 have seen average incomes rise by little more than 5%.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n CommSec chief economist Craig James says the results confirm that only a small proportion of the economy is booming as a result of soaring global commodity prices.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The average employee in the West Australian oil and gas industry earns nearly triple the nation\u2019s average, highlighting the extent of income inequality in Australia.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But while the economy is having an uneven effect on wages, the nation is getting wealthier, with the ABS figures showing private wealth soared almost 9% higher in the 12 months to the September quarter while debt fell 2.9%.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to the ABS, the average Australian makes $1,010 a week, up 5.5% from the previous survey in 2008.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Average wages are best in the Australian Capital Territory, where workers make an average of $1,218 a week. Tasmanians are the nation\u2019s lowest paid workers, earning $877 a week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n WA beat its mining counterpart Queensland, with average weekly earnings of $1,107 compared to $969, while workers in NSW earn a weekly average of $1,054, trumping Victoria\u2019s figure of $955.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The data also shows that professionals work shorter hours than many blue-collar workers, which is probably because they are not paid overtime.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Truck drivers and machinery operators are the nation\u2019s hardest workers, clocking more than four hours of overtime to complete a 43.7-hour week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, people on contracts earn $95 more per week on average than collective agreements, which are negotiated by unions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Collective agreements are predominantly used by larger organizations, while individual arrangements are favoured by organisations with fewer than 20 employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most Australian workers are missing out on significant wage rises despite an increasingly tight labour market, according to new data<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}