Labour market policy director, Greg Jericho, notes in his column in Guardian Australia that even if wages have increased by 2.5% in the next release (up from 2.3% in the 12 months to December) real wages will have fallen 2.5% in the past 12 months.

That would mean real wages would be back at 2014 levels and barely above where they were when the LNP took office in September 2013.

Worse still for low-income earners, in the past 12 months the prices of non-discretionary items rose 6.6%. For those whose income goes more towards paying essential bills than does the average household, the pain of these price rises has been much higher. Their real wages have likely fallen by more than 3% in the past 12 months.

This is why any gloating about a recovery from the pandemic must be tempered to consider the reality of workers’ lives. It is not enough to point to lower unemployment if real wages are falling faster than they ever have outside of the introduction of the GST – especially for lower income earners.

That is not a recovery; that is a failure.

With interest rate rises now very much on the way, without wage rises that account for inflation and properly reward for increases in productivity, workers standard of living is set to fall and see them back where they were nearly a decade ago.