Designers and architects starting new jobs are among the only Australians whose salaries are growing faster than inflation.
Data released on Monday by Australian employment platform Seek’s new advertised wage index found that the design and architecture industry saw the highest growth of any sector in the country.
During the last 12 months through July, advertised pay packages for design jobs grew 7.3 percent.
Not bad considering that for the 12 months through June, the statistics office found that inflation rose to 6.1 percent.
Second on Seek’s list was the IT industry, but it was considerably behind the architecture sector, up 6.2 percent, only slightly above inflation.
Most industries are seeing wage growth of more than three percent, but bucking that trend were jobs associated with the government, which dragged down other roles.
Science and technology jobs have only increased wages for new hires by 0.6 percent over the past year.
Government jobs, teaching, and social services also lagged behind, only seeing increases of 1.4%, 1.6%, and 1.6%, respectively.
In fact, in the last quarter, community services lagged 0.1 percent.
The same was true of the media and advertising industry, with wages falling 0.5 percent, and wages in the insurance and retirement sector posting a 0.3 percent drop from April.
Seek senior economist Matt Cowgill told news.com.au that the data was not indicative of wage increases. Furthermore, he reflects that bosses are raising salaries to attract new talent in some fields.
Cowgill also said that some industries that were not performing as well could be attributed to changing market conditions.
The real estate sector, for example, “has seen job postings dip a bit” as Australian properties have started to lose steam after four consecutive months of interest rate increases.
According to Seek data, the same could be seen in the construction sector, which was at the bottom end of the list and has only grown 3.2 percent year-on-year.
Cowgill attributed those slow results to the fact that many construction companies were struggling to turn a profit, with business collapses in recent months making it unlikely they would seek out new talent with big pay raises.
Unlike other industries, the number of construction job postings is only slightly above pre-Covid levels.
Seek’s dataset also found that the median advertised salary was $85,409.
At the state level, South Australia and the ACT were named and shamed for not giving new workers the most lucrative pay packages.
“Growth in South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory was relatively modest, but all other states and the Northern Territory saw advertised wage growth of more than 3.5 per cent,” the report says.
That said, on average, advertised full-time equivalent (FTE) salaries are much higher in the ACT than anywhere else: over $100,000.
Meanwhile, Tasmania and South Australia are the two lowest-paying states and territories based on their job advertisements, at around $80,000.
Although the design/architecture industry ranked first in terms of percentage increases, the IT industry stood out in terms of pure pay.
The average IT worker hired on Seek is paid $130,000, followed by mining at $126,000 and consultants at $124,000.
Hospitality and retail were the lowest-paid industries, at $62,000 and $58,000 respectively.
Seek will publish a new index of advertised salaries each month.
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