Western Australia’s labour market remains tight, with low unemployment and significant growth in real wages recorded for the June quarter, according to the Department of Consumer and Employment Protection’s labour market bulletin.
Western Australia’s labour market remains tight, with low unemployment and significant growth in real wages recorded for the June quarter, according to the Department of Consumer and Employment Protection’s labour market bulletin.
The state’s wage price index (WPI) continued to rise during the three months to June, up by 1.7 per cent following a 1.1 per cent rise during the March quarter.
This defied the national trend, with growth in the WPI slowing from 1.1 per cent to 0.8 per cent.
WA recorded the highest increase in the WPI (5.1 per cent) for the year to June, followed by Queensland and Tasmania (4.5 per cent).
Meanwhile, real wages in WA grew for the 24th consecutive quarter, from an average annual rate of 2 per cent to 3.59 per cent.
This was well above the national rate of 0.63 per cent.
For the May quarter, WA led the states in terms of earnings, with average weekly ordinary time earnings growing by 2.1 per cent to $1,168.30.
This was up 9 per cent for the year to May.
New South Wales was ranked second on the wages scale, with average earnings at $1,128.50, followed by Victoria ($1,074.40) and Queensland ($1018.00).
National growth in wages was much slower, at 1.7 per cent for the quarter and 4.6 per cent for the year to May.
In the year to June, full-time employment in WA rose by 4.1 per cent, while part-time employment was up by 1.6 per cent.
Of the total workforce, 71.3 per cent of people were employed full-time.
Youth unemployment in WA (10.4 per cent) was the lowest of all states.
WA’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate continued to rise, to 3.7 per cent in June, up from 3.3 per cent in May and 2.8 per cent in April.
The state was second only to Queensland, which had an unemployment rate of 3.5 per cent.
Nationally, the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.2 per cent for the three months April to June.
WA’s participation rate in June was higher than any other state (68.4 per cent), and exceeded the national rate of 64.9 per cent.
Working days lost per thousand employees in WA fell slightly during the quarter, from 0.5 to 0.4.
This represented half the national figure of 0.8 days lost per thousand employees.
Of the 7,100 total days lost to industrial action nationally during the quarter, only 400 occurred in WA.
The inflation rate in WA remains above the national average, however, with Perth’s CPI rising by 1.4 per cent in the June quarter.
This was above the 0.2 per cent growth achieved in the March quarter.
Perth’s inflation rate for the year to June was 3.1 per cent, below March’s rate of 3.5 per cent.
There was a similar easing in the national inflation rate, from 2.4 per cent in the March quarter to 2.1 per cent.
Nationally, the CPI rose in the June quarter by 1.2 per cent.
