Wage Payments in Australia Show Consistent Growth Over Two Years
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that the total value of wages and salaries paid to workers across Australia has continued to grow steadily over the past two years, pointing to ongoing resilience in the labour market.
According to the latest Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator, employers paid $107.4 billion in total wages and salaries in December 2025, an increase of 5.7 per cent compared with the same month a year earlier. This growth rate mirrors the annual change recorded in December 2024, showing no significant acceleration or slowdown over the 12‑month period.
ABS Head of Labour Statistics Sean Crick highlighted the consistency of the figures, noting that the annual rise to December 2025 matched that of the previous year, though both were softer than the 7.2 per cent jump seen to December 2023 after the post‑pandemic recovery.
The quarterly figures, spanning July to December 2025, show a steady climb in total wages paid throughout the first half of the 2025‑26 financial year.
A notable feature of this release is the introduction of a new measure called “employee jobs,” which counts the number of individuals receiving wages and salaries each month. According to the ABS, this new indicator helps shed light on monthly fluctuations. For instance, total wages fell by 0.9 per cent in the three months to December 2025 following a high base in September, but the decline in employee jobs was smaller, at 0.3 per cent.
While this measure serves as an additional lens on earnings trends, it is separate from the Wage Price Index — the ABS’s established gauge of underlying wage changes — which considers base pay movements without the influence of employment or hours worked.
Economists say that while wage payments are rising, broader measures of wage growth, such as the Wage Price Index, still point to moderate increases when adjusted for inflation. Recent ABS wage price data shows annual wage rises around 3.4 per cent, underlining ongoing tension between wage gains and cost‑of‑living pressures for households.
The ABS release is part of a suite of labour market statistics that aim to give policymakers, businesses, and workers a clearer picture of earnings dynamics across Australia.
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