Wages are finally on the way up, but there’s a long way to go before workers feel relief

‘A 1.3% quarterly increase should not be all the surprising or concerning for the RBA, given public-sector wages have lagged behind that of the private sector.’ Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The good news is real wages are finally going up – and not by so much that the Reserve Bank should be worried that it needs to once again raise interest rates.

Last September there was a big 1.3% jump in wages. If you had just looked at that period in isolation, you would have thought the mythical wage breakout was about to occur and the RBA would be off to the races raising rates higher and higher.