Total wages and salaries paid by Australian employers grew by almost six percent over the 12 months to June.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data showed $103.9 billion was paid in June 2025, up 5.9 percent from June 2024.
ABS Head of Labour Statistics Sean Crick said annual growth between June 2024 and June 2025 was similar to the annual growth to June 2024, when wages grew by six percent.
Mr Crick said aggregate measures of wages could be heavily influenced by differences in the number of persons paid, hours worked, seasonal payments and one-off events in any given month.
He said by adding together 12 months of wages and salaries paid in a financial year, and comparing the annual growth, better insights into underlying growth could be gained.
“Total wages and salaries paid by employers totalled $1,219 billion in the 2024-25 financial year, growing 5.9 percent from the 2023-24 financial year.
“This was lower than the seven per cent between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 years.”
Mr Crick said the Health care and social assistance services industry held the largest share of total wages and salaries paid by employers, with 14.6 percent of the 2024-25 financial year estimate.
“This industry’s rise of $14.8 billion from the 2023-24 financial year, was 21.6 percent of the total increase in wages and salaries paid by all employers in the 2024-25 financial year.”
He said the Public administration and safety industry saw the second largest growth in wages and salaries in dollar terms in the 2024-25 financial year of $8.5 billion, and also had the strongest increase from 2023-24 financial year growth (up $1.3 billion).
“The stronger 2024-25 growth was influenced by large state government pay rises, one-off payments such as backpay, and temporary jobs which supported the federal election in May 2025.”
