Australian workers have recovered their living standards from high cost of living, as wages tend to outweigh inflation in the March year.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the hourly wage rate rose by 3.4% over the 12-month period, while the price rose by 2.4%.

Quarterly Wage Price Index data shows that 1% of real wages climbed the fastest in five years, and is the five-year average of the quarterly Wage Price Index data.

Jim Chalmers, who won a huge victory in the May 3 election on Wednesday, praised the turnaround for the Australians’ true rewards, even though he said “we know we still have work to do”.

"People are under pressure and the global environment is really uncertain," Chalmers told reporters.

"The best defense against global economic uncertainty is decent wages, tax cuts, and making our economy more resilient while helping people's living costs. And, we have always made decent wage growth part of the solution to the cost of living challenges, not part of the problem," he said.

New public sector business agreements in states add qualified elderly care workers, while parenting retention payments help pay tax rates in March at the rate of public sector growth (3.6%) rather than in the private sector (3.3%).

Although in the first three months of 2025, economists said that despite a slightly stronger increase in wages than they were, economists said growth was aligned with the Reserve Bank’s expectations and would not prevent the bank from lowering interest rates next Tuesday.

The recently returned Albany government as a first-order business will argue that the above inflation will be raised to the minimum wage ahead of the Equity Work Commission’s annual determination.

With decisions in the coming weeks, unions announced a 4.5 per cent increase, while the basis for business groups such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industrial Conference is about 2.5 per cent.

Amanda Rishworth, newly appointed Minister of Employment and Workplace Relations, said the submission to the commission would propose “economic sustainable” increase on Friday, which would “provide further relief for low-income workers who continue to face pressure on life”.

While the wage price index indicates a solid increase in real income, the index represents a useful but narrow situation of changes in employment opportunities.

A new OECD report shows that the broader scale of living standards in the global environment shows that Australia's actual household disposable income fell by an average of 1.1 per cent last year, marking the third consecutive year of decline.

As in 2023, this is the worst result of the country headquartered in the Paris-based organization analyses.

Of the 20 countries in 2024, only Finnish households also saw their one-time income decline last year.

Data shows that living standards will begin to recover in the second half of 2024.