Wage Price Index QoQ

The Wage Price Index, Australia (WPI) is the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) quarterly gauge of pure wage-price change holding labour quantity and quality fixed. QoQ means change from the prior quarter, for quarters compiled since September 1997, with workforce composition, hours worked and employee traits held out. It covers private and public employee jobs, from full-time and part-time to casual, permanent, managerial and non-managerial posts. It leaves out agriculture, forestry and fishing jobs, household and embassy staff, micro firms (0-4 staff), defence-force jobs, jobs under 6 months and self-employed contractors.

It covers March, June, September and December quarters, priced in the last pay period ending on or before the third Friday of the middle month. The Wage Price Index Survey collects the prices, and release comes about seven weeks after quarter end at 11:30am Canberra time for all users. It comes with tables, charts, spreadsheets, a Methodology page, a media release and splits by method of setting pay, after a restricted lockup for officials. Original numbers stay final except rarely, while adjusted and trend series revise quarterly, weights update every two years and the sample refreshes yearly in December.

Quarterly moves reflect pay changes weighted by employer wage spending across sectors, states and industries.

• Private sector, 78.0%: the largest share of wage spending.
• Public sector, 22.0%: shaped by agreement timing.
• New South Wales, 31.7%: the top-weighted state.
• Victoria, 25.6%: the second-weighted state.
• Queensland, 19.4%: the third-weighted state.
• Health care and social assistance, 16.0%: the top-weighted industry.

Professional, scientific and technical (11.7%) and Education and training (9.2%) come next. Construction (8.8%) and Public administration and safety (7.7%) follow. The September quarter 2023 (released 15 November 2023) rose 1.3% seasonally adjusted and 4.0% over the year. It was the highest quarterly rise in 26 years, and the highest yearly rate since March 2009. Private pay rose 1.4% and public pay 0.9%, while health care rose 3.1% in original terms as the top contributor. A 5.75% award lift from 1 July 2023 and 15% for aged-care workers drove it, as 46% of jobs rose 5.4% versus 43% last year.

1. Basket and matched jobs: The WPI is a Laspeyres-type index (fixed-basket gauge) that reprices the same jobs each quarter. Only matched jobs in the two quarters count, so quality, hours and workforce mix stay fixed.
2. Ordinary-time and bonus rates: Ordinary-time rate excluding bonuses is the base hourly rate, while bonus value spreads cash over standard hours. For example, 10.00 becomes 14.00 with bonus, as ordinary-time including bonuses equals base plus B.
3. Total rates with overtime: Overtime uses a fixed penalty factor from first observation, with 38 and 2 hours giving 0.95 and 0.05 shares. The factor is 1.75 from 17.50 over 10.00, total excluding bonuses is 10.38, and including bonuses gives 14.18.
4. Elementary aggregates: Jobs sharing state, sector and industry form an elementary aggregate (EA, the lowest group), averaged with sample weights times standard hours. The publisher 3-job example gives 19.11, and weights above this level come from the Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours.
5. Relatives: Each EA relative divides this quarter average by last quarter average, chained quarterly, and scales its value aggregate. The index links those aggregates, as in the two-EA illustration from 100.0 to 111.5, or 11.5%.
6. Reference and movements: The reference is 2008-2009 equals 100.0, and yearly index equals the mean of its four quarters. Always divide index levels for change and never add quarterly percents, with changes from rounded one-decimal indexes.
7. Seasonal adjustment and trend: Only total hourly rates excluding bonuses is adjusted, by concurrent re-estimation with ARIMA extension. Trend is a 7-term Henderson moving average of adjusted data, as timing of agreements and awards drives seasonality.