The first public policy changes to boost workers' power in more than 30 years - under the Albanese Government - have coincided with an increase in nominal and real wages and a rise in workers' share of the fruits of the economy, according to the Centre for Future Work's David Peetz.
Growth in private sector rates of pay is continuing to ease, falling from 3.6% a year in trend terms to 3.3%, while public sector growth has also dropped, according to the ABS.
Low Pay Commission research has found that Government policies have driven the UK minimum wage's "bite" of the median up by 9.3 percentage points, while Australia's has increased by less than 0.1 percentage points since 2015, with next month's 9.8% wage floor rise in the old country to bring the minimum up to two-thirds of the median wage.
Award wage increases have responded to rather than contributed to higher price inflation, and although the tight labour market has brought higher pay growth, it is "not enough to be a threat to slowing price inflation", according to a leading labour market economist.
The RBA says several new early indicators it has developed in-house are helping it to build a "fuller view" of wage movements ahead of the release of official figures.
The highly-orthodox IMF has told the RBA's annual research conference that it is "hard to find" recent wage-price spirals across advanced economies and that pay acceleration "should not be seen as a sign" that the corkscrew feared by the central bank "is taking hold", in a session in which new board member and former FWC president Iain Ross led discussion.
New DEWR data has undercut RBA warnings about the risks of a wage-price spiral, indicating that private sector bargained wage growth remains anchored below 4% a year.
The Remuneration Tribunal has awarded a 4% pay rise for federal parliamentarians and the most senior public servants after noting that increases awarded over the past decade had been "conservative", including zero in 2020 and 2021 and 2.75% last year.
RBA Governor Philip Lowe, who earned the ire of unions and some in the Albanese Government with his repeated warnings about the risks of a wage-price spiral, is set to be replaced at the end of his term by his deputy, Michele Bullock, who will be the first woman to lead the central bank.
