Australians earning less than six figures now have below-average incomes amid a cost-of-living crisis.
The average full-time salary without bonuses or overtime stood at $100,017 in May, and four in ten sectors now have salary levels typically in the six-figure range, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Mining was the highest-paid occupation, with an average salary of $156,796, and was one of seven of the 17 sectors with average salary levels in the six figures.
The others were IT, media and telecommunications ($126,734), finance and insurance ($118,726), professional, scientific and technical services ($116,761), electricity, waste, water and gas ($116,678), public administration security which covers police officers such as ($105,877), and education which generally includes teachers ($105,373).
The health care and social assistance category, which includes elder care workers, was not far behind, with an average equivalent salary of $98,925, making them even better paid than construction workers and laborers, who receive $94,734.
This comes after aged care workers were given a 15 per cent pay rise in July 2023, with the Labor government investing $11 billion over four years to make this happen.
Health care, traditionally a lower-paid sector, has also received a boost from high salaries in the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Accommodation and food services, which includes hospitality workers, had the lowest average wage at $73,892, behind retail trade at $75,634.
Australians earning less than six figures now have below-average incomes during a cost-of-living crisis
Both were well above the full-time minimum wage of $47,627, but those figures include managers, which raises the average.
The typical Australian worker now earns more than $100,000 a year for the first time in history.
This person can now borrow $520,087, which means they can buy a $650,109 home with a 20 percent mortgage deposit.
That average worker can buy a mid-priced apartment on his own in any major capital city except Sydney, but a mid-priced house is out of reach unless he goes to Darwin or an outer suburb of Hobart.
Australia’s unemployment rate rose to a two-year high of 4.2 percent in July, with 23,900 people losing their jobs last month in another sign that the Reserve Bank’s aggressive interest rates are slowing the economy.
Australia’s jobless ranks have risen to 637,100, the highest number since October 2021 when Sydney and Melbourne were still in lockdown.
Nearly three years after those lockdowns, Victoria had Australia’s highest unemployment rate at 4.6 per cent, while Western Australia had the lowest at 3.7 per cent.
The health care and social assistance category, which includes elder care workers, was not far behind with an average equivalent salary of $98,925, making them even better paid than construction workers and laborers at $94,734.
Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock said last week that there would be no rate cuts in the next six months, but Commonwealth Bank senior economist Belinda Allen said worsening unemployment would force the RBA to cut rates before Christmas from the current 12-year high of 4.35 per cent.
“We continue to maintain our central scenario that the first rate cut by the RBA will begin in November,” he said.
“But we are increasingly concerned given the shortening time needed to achieve the data set-up required for the RBA to feel comfortable cutting the cash rate, especially after today’s jobs data.”
In the labour market, wages grew by 4.1 percent over the past year, just above the inflation rate of 3.8 percent.
Real, inflation-adjusted wage growth is weak as Australia continues to receive a large influx of new immigrants.
In the last financial year, 469,140 net migrants moved to Australia, including both permanent inflows of skilled migrants and long-term inflows of international students.
In July, Australia still had an adjusted rental vacancy rate of 1.3 percent, with strong population growth creating more competition for accommodation, SQM Research data showed.
Perth, a mining-rich city that sees a larger flow of interstate migration, had an even tighter rental vacancy rate of 0.8 percent.