Today, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released a further update to the Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator – a new experimental measure of aggregate wages and salaries from Single Touch Payroll data.
Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics, said: “The ABS has continued work on aggregate wages and salaries statistics from Single Touch Payroll data. Today’s release offers monthly insights over the last six months, from April 2023 through to September 2023, and follows the initial release of figures for April in the middle of the year.
“In September 2023, employees were paid around $99.6 billion in wages and salaries. September is a seasonal peak in earnings, when periodic bonuses are paid in a range of industries.
“These new figures show us that wages and salaries paid by employers rose by around 3.8 per cent, or $3.7 billion, from August to September, and were 8.4 per cent, or $7.7 billion, higher than September 2022.
“As with all aggregate measures of total wages and salaries, today’s data reflects a combination of underlying wage growth, the increase in employment reported in other ABS measures, and other compositional changes such as hours worked and periodic payments.”
While these components are all currently combined, the ABS is exploring the future separation of periodic payments like bonuses and overtime.
| Wages and salaries paid by employers ($billion) | Wages and salaries paid by employers(a) ($billion) | |
|---|---|---|
| Apr-23 | 91.9 | |
| May-23 | 91.5 | |
| Jun-23 | 92.1 | |
| Jul-23 | 94.4 | |
| Aug-23 | 95.9 | |
| Sep-23 | 99.6 |
a. The three most recent months include imputation to temporarily account for less complete data and will be revised as business reporting becomes more complete. Future enhancements to the imputation method will, in addition to reducing the extent of revisions, also increase the comparability of periods containing imputation (in this release July, August and September) to those without (June and prior months).
Every industry except Education and training saw a rise in aggregate wages and salaries paid by employers between August and September 2023.
The industries with the largest monthly rises were also those where periodic bonuses are more common in September. These included;
- Information media and telecommunications (up 16.9 per cent)
- Electricity, gas, water and waste services (up 13.5 per cent)
- Financial and insurance services (up 13.4 per cent)
- Mining (up 12.5 per cent)
- Retail trade (up 7.5 per cent) and
- Transport, postal and warehousing (up 7.2 per cent).
Together, these industries account for almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of the total rise in wages and salaries paid by employers in September 2023.
These seasonal payments are important to consider when comparing growth in aggregate wages and salaries between industries.
| Transport, postal and warehousing (%) | Retail trade (%) | Mining (%) | Electricity, gas, water and waste services (%) | Financial and insurance services (%) | Information media and telecommunications (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr-23 | 1.5 | 1.1 | -12.3 | 0.8 | -4.1 | -4.2 |
| May-23 | -1.9 | -3.5 | -2.2 | -1.1 | -0.7 | -1.7 |
| Jun-23 | -0.6 | 1.6 | 1.3 | 0.4 | 0.9 | 2.8 |
| Jul-23 | 3.4 | 3.0 | 2.8 | 2.5 | 1.9 | -2.5 |
| Aug-23 | 0.9 | 1.5 | 3.9 | 1.6 | 1.9 | 4.9 |
| Sep-23 | 7.2 | 7.5 | 12.5 | 13.5 | 13.4 | 16.9 |
a. The three most recent months include imputation to temporarily account for less complete data and are revised as business reporting becomes more complete. Future enhancements to the imputation method will, in addition to reducing the extent of revisions, also increase the comparability of periods containing imputation (in this release July, August and September) to those without (June and prior months).
The only fall in aggregate wages and salaries was seen in the Education and training industry, down 2.0 per cent from August 2023. This reflects the seasonal influence of the spring term break, which started in the last week of September in most states and territories.
Every state and territory saw a rise in aggregate wages and salaries paid by employers in September 2023. The largest monthly rise was in Western Australia (up 4.7 per cent), which has a high proportion of employees in industries with bonus payments in September, like the Mining industry.
The Northern Territory saw the smallest rise in aggregate wages and salaries into September (up 0.5 per cent) which followed two months of strong increases. Together, these increases were reflected in 13.8 per cent annual growth over the year to September 2023.
| Month change (%) | Annual change (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 4.0 | 8.0 |
| Victoria | 3.9 | 7.5 |
| Queensland | 3.2 | 9.2 |
| South Australia | 3.7 | 9.0 |
| Western Australia | 4.7 | 9.1 |
| Tasmania | 2.9 | 8.1 |
| Northern Territory | 0.5 | 13.8 |
| Australian Capital Territory | 3.1 | 10.8 |
