Wages and salaries fall in April: ABS
There was less in employee paypackets last month, new figures show
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Monthly wages in Australia have fallen over the past month, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.
The figures released today reveal total wages and salaries paid to employees across Australia fell by 1.7 percent, or $1.6 billion during April.
Western Australia saw the largest decline, with a drop of -3.7 percent over the month, which is a result of the high number of mining industry employees and cyclical bonuses in March. The next greatest fall was in NSW, where wages and salaries declined by -1.8 percent, followed by Tasmania (-1.6 percent) and Victoria (-1.5 percent).
Across industries, mining recorded the biggest fall, down -13.8 percent, followed by the rental, hiring and real estate services sector (-5 percent), the financial and insurance services sector (-4.9 percent) and information media and telecommunications (-4.7 percent). Other industries fared better, with wages and salaries growth in accommodation and food services, up 2.1 percent, while transport, postal and warehousing and healthcare and social assistance industries both up by 1.1 percent.
In signs that medium sized businesses are starting to tighten their belts, those working for businesses between 20 and 199 employees saw a -2.4 percent drop in wages, the largest fall by employment size.
In annual terms, wages have increased nationally by 9.3 percent. Western Australian employees saw the greatest growth, with their paypackets increasing by 11.6 percent, followed by Queensland (10.3 percent) and NSW (9.5 percent).
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The federal budget has rattled property investors. But the biggest mistake isn’t the tax changes, it’s the conclusion many are drawing from them.
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The recent budget has forced a reckoning for property investors.
Negative gearing now restricted to new residential builds, the CGT discount gone and on paper, the numbers look different.
And many investors are responding by pivoting toward yield, prioritising cash flow over capital growth in a way that property strategists say misses the point entirely.
“The debate has shifted to yield versus growth as if they are opposing forces,” says Abdullah Nouh, founder of Melbourne-based buyers’ agency Mecca Property Group. “But that framing is itself the mistake.”
Nouh, who works with high-net-worth families and investors on long-term acquisition strategy, argues that capital growth remains the primary driver of genuine wealth creation and that the post-budget environment has made quality assets more important, not less.
The numbers make his case plainly. An additional $500 per week in rental income is welcome. A prestige asset appreciating by $1 million over a market cycle is transformative.
These are not equivalent outcomes, and portfolios built around yield at the expense of location and land value tend to generate income while wealth stands largely still.
The more nuanced shift Nouh is seeing among sophisticated investors is a move toward assets where both outcomes can be engineered simultaneously – established homes on substantial land in quality locations, where the existing dwelling can be repositioned, rental returns improved, and the underlying land value compounds independent of what sits on it.
For investors with existing equity, commercial property is also entering the conversation in a more serious way.
Prestige industrial assets, medical centres and long-leased essential retail offer income profiles that residential property in most capital city markets cannot currently match: longer lease terms, tenants covering outgoings, and greater predictability than the residential tenancy cycle.
“The investors who build lasting wealth are rarely the ones who chased yield or growth exclusively,” says Nouh.
“They are the ones who built a strategy they could sustain – one that generated enough income to hold quality assets through multiple cycles while those assets compounded in value.”
The budget has changed the settings. It has not changed the fundamentals.
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