Australia wage growth review (Industry wise)

Today, Australia’s wage growth report was released from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for first quarter 2016, which along with stronger Dollar took toll on Aussie, which is down -0.4%, trading at 0.729 against Dollar. Wages on an average grew 0.4% in first quarter and 2.1% from a year back, which is weakest level since 1998.

However, data broken up by industry in private sector seems to be doing pretty well, compared to a country hit by commodities’ prices.

While some industries like mining, services, educations, transport, postal and warehousing haven’t done so well in last year or two, some like accommodations and food services, information media and telecommunications, retail trade, Rental, Hiring and Real Estate services have done very well.

In last one year, wage growth has been worst in services industry, just about 0.6%y/y, followed by mining with just 1.4% but workers in food and accommodation services saw as much as 7% y/y rise. Manufacturing sector (private) saw above 4% rise. If looked closely, as mining and services got hurt, workers in other industries have flourished.

The details by industry is shown in the chart. Kindly note, this data is excluding the bonuses, since bonus tends to be volatile in period of hardship.