As the Albanese Government pushes for the passage of its Closing Loopholes legislation that provides new protections for "employee-like" workers, the ABS has revealed its first "experimental estimates" indicating that digital platform workers account for 1% of the working population and most commonly perform food delivery and personal transport tasks.
Annual consumer price inflation of 5.4% continues the fall from last year's near-8% high, but monthly figures are heading in the wrong direction, according to ABS quarterly statistics released today.
In figures that don't align with the RBA's warnings about a wage-price spiral, new ABS figures show private sector rates of pay excluding bonuses are rising at an unchanged 3.8% a year.
Unit labour costs have fallen for the second successive quarter as a small decline in hours worked still produced an annual increase of 7.1%, according to ABS national accounts data released today.
Private sector rates of pay increased to 3.8% annually in the March quarter, up from 3.6% in the previous three-month period, according to the ABS, but relatively weak public sector rises have restricted the economy-wide movement to 3.6% in trend terms, about half the rate of inflation.
Economy-wide labour costs have risen modestly in the December quarter as workers' share of income maintains its rebound from record lows, according to ABS national accounts data released today.
Private sector rates of pay increased to 3.6% annually in the December quarter, up from 3.4% in the previous three-month period, according to the ABS, but relatively low public sector rises have restricted the economy-wide movement to 3.3%.
Wages in private sector agreements approved in the September quarter remained stuck at 2.9% a year, defying labour shortages and inflationary pressure, according to DEWR data.
Union density has dropped significantly from 14.3% to 12.5% over the past two years and almost 10 percentage points a decade for the past 30 years, according to ABS data released today.
