Research and development and related infrastructure will have an important role to play. Sasha WoolleyĪustralia needs a plan to move up the value-added chain while avoiding doing things that harm vulnerable families. Retailers are the large employers most likely to use more digitisation. This is what awaits us when the days of "digging it out" and "shipping it off" become numbered by the Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to diversify China’s sources of supply. Countries with neither resources nor a technological edge have suffered much more, particularly in Europe. Raising the minimum wage towards the French level can only make their situation worse.Īustralia, even with the help of the resources boom, has experienced a low-skilled unemployment rate of over 7 per cent. The pressure of globalisation pushes unskilled persons into unemployment, into casual and involuntary part time work (needing multiple jobs to survive), or out of the workforce altogether. Since 2000, unemployment rates for low-educated workers have either stayed the same or moved higher. This would be OK, if disappearing low-skilled work was due to workers moving into higher skilled jobs. Only Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain have seen more unskilled jobs disappear. Since 2000 the share of jobs for people with only primary and lower secondary education has fallen by about 16 per cent in Australia. There is downward pressure on their wages and there are less jobs available for them. Low-skilled workers are squeezed between these twin forces. Western companies have had to respond through digitalisation, robotics and other labour-saving technologies. Since China entered WTO in 2001 cheap imports have penetrated all OECD countries via subsidised prices on an unprecedented scale, hurting companies and unskilled workers. How is this possible? Well, this tells us the households concerned are not those blessed with full-time working adults earning at or above the minimum wage. Nevertheless, despite relatively high wages for full-time workers, the OECD also points out the poverty rate in the 18-65 working-age group is 9.4 per centof households. Among the advanced OECD countries only France, at 62 per cent of the median wage, is higher. So, having one full-time working adult in the household gives you a good chance of not being at the poverty level, and especially so if you earn more than the minimum wage.Īustralia’s 55 per cent relative minimum wage is quite high compared to other countries. The minimum national wage is just over $719 per week ($37,400 per year ). The median wage for full-time adults according to our statistics bureau is $1320 per week or $68,640 per year. According to the OECD, the minimum versus the median wage is 55 per cent for Australia. So, how are full-time adult workers doing versus such a level? For Australia, those in full-time employment in the 18-65 age group earn the minimum wage or more. So, the poverty level according to the OECD measure must be half that, or just over $23,000 a year (like the old age pension). Let’s push this amount up by the trend growth in earnings of 4 per cent since then, and we get $887 per week, or $46,130 a year. Our statistics bureau tells us that in 2016 the median income of households of equal size was $853 per week, a solid figure based on the Census. The OECD defines the poverty rate as the proportion of people below half of the median household income in each age group. If implemented this policy will please the unions, but it will make things worse for marginalised families suffering genuine poverty. Many adults in full-time work live below the poverty line, so the argument goes, justifying a rise in the minimum wage relative to the most common wage (referred to as the "median"). Labor proposes a "minimum living wage" in their election platform.
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