{"id":66053,"date":"2025-08-13T21:40:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T21:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/66053\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T21:40:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T21:40:16","slug":"the-extraordinary-collapse-of-australian-real-incomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/66053\/","title":{"rendered":"The extraordinary collapse of Australian real incomes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OECD data shows that Australia has experienced the largest decline in real per capita household disposable incomes in the developed world.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/OECD-Real-household-income-per-capita-2.png\" width=\"636\" height=\"489\" alt=\"Real per capita HDI\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The March quarter national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed that annual real per capita household disposable income was tracking 8.2% below its Q2 2022 peak:<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Real-household-disposable-income-Annual.png\" width=\"660\" height=\"530\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Real HDI per capita annual\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday\u2019s Statement of Monetary Policy (SoMP) from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) suggested that the recovery of real per capita household disposable income will be painfully slow.<\/p>\n<p>According to the RBA SoMP\u2019s forecast, Australia\u2019s real per capita household disposable income will be 5.5% below its Q2 2022 \u2018covid-bubble\u2019 peak by Q4 2027.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/RBA-household-disposable-income-forecast.png\" width=\"516\" height=\"436\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"RBA HDI forecast\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>By Q4 2027, real per capita household disposable income is forecast to be only 6.6% higher than in Q4 2011. That would represent anaemic income growth over a 16-year period.<\/p>\n<p>The situation is no better for real wages, which, following Wednesday\u2019s wage data from the ABS, were tracking\u00a06.0% below their Q2 2020 peak at around Q4 2011 levels:<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Real-wages.png\" width=\"627\" height=\"481\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Real wages\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The August SoMP forecast that Australian real wages would remain 5.5% below their peak in Q4 2027, tracking just above Q4 2011 levels:<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/RBA-real-wages-projection-1.png\" width=\"626\" height=\"552\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"RBA real wages\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The reality is that Australian real incomes will continue to languish so long as productivity growth remains moribund. And it is difficult to see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrobusiness.com.au\/2025\/07\/australia-is-caught-in-a-low-productivity-trap\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">how productivity growth can rebound<\/a> with the federal government intent on continuing the mass immigration growth model, committing energy policy suicide, and pump-priming housing rather than encouraging productive investment.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OECD data shows that Australia has experienced the largest decline in real per capita household disposable incomes in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-66053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}