Australia’s minimum wage will increase by 3.75 percent from July 1.
The Fair Work Commission announced the rise in the National Minimum Wage and all modern award minimum wage rates today.
The Commission said in determining the increase, its primary consideration was the cost-of-living pressures still being felt by lower-paid employees, “notwithstanding that inflation is considerably lower than it was at the time of last year’s Review”.
“Modern award minimum wages remain, in real terms, lower than they were five years ago, notwithstanding last year’s increase of 5.75 per cent, and employee households reliant on award wages are undergoing financial stress as a result,” the Commission said in its decision.
“At the same time, we consider that it is not appropriate at this time to increase award wages by any amount significantly above the inflation rate, principally because labour productivity is no higher than it was four years ago and productivity growth has only recently returned to positive territory.
“We have taken into account that the labour market and business profit growth overall remain strong, but the picture is less positive in some of the industry sectors which contain a large proportion of modern award-reliant employees,” it stated.
The Commission said it had also taken into account that employees would shortly receive the Stage 3 tax cuts and the Budget cost-of-living measures, “which are projected to increase real household disposable incomes over the next 12 months”.
