As part of its contribution to the Jobs and Skills Summit the ACTU has claimed that wages growth has not kept up with productivity growth.

This claim is enlisted by the ACTU to question the emphasis placed on the importance of productivity growth to real incomes growth and to support a further claim that “without deliberate measures to link wage growth to productivity improvement there is no reason to believe productivity growth will lift wages”.

This note digs into the ACTU claims and finds:

• The ACTU analysis of productivity growth and real wages growth is fundamentally mistaken.
• When the ACTU’s error is corrected, the clear evidence is that real wages growth and productivity growth are closely matched.
• As a consequence, the ACTU proposals for deliberate policy measures to link wages growth and productivity growth are unfounded.

Read the full research note for all the details