Overall real wage growth stumbled behind inflation over recent years, but key trade workers earned significant hikes to advertised salaries over the same period.

Between June 2019 and June 2024, job seekers in several skilled trades watched advertised salaries increase well above the 20.9 per cent Consumer Price Index rise, Seek advertised salary data shows.

The data was released amid National Skills Week (August 19 to 25), which celebrates and promotes the diversity of career pathways available through vocational education and training in Australia.

Seek head of employment analytics Leigh Broderick said the findings reflected the opportunity for Australians to unlock stronger earning potential through wider skills and education routes such as trades.

“Over the past five years, we’ve seen the demand for skilled trades rise, driven by robust industry growth and a persistent skills shortage,” he said.

“This has positively impacted salary growth in a number of roles.”

Many of the roles on Seek’s list reflect the government’s list of persistent skill shortages.

Among more than 200 occupations that had skill shortages in 2022 and 2023, Jobs and Skills Australia attributed 33 per cent to a lack of technicians and trades workers and 10 per cent to machinery operators and drivers.

In addition to a skills shortage, the advertised salary rises could also be attributed to a ‘suitability gap’, when qualified job applicants may not meet criteria such as professional experience or ability to travel, The Australia Institute chief economist Greg Jericho told The New Daily.

He said a smaller number of people eligible for certain roles in Australia meant they could more easily move between jobs – so potential employers may be hoping a higher salary will tempt workers to stay put.

But he emphasised Seek’s data focused on advertised salaries for new jobs, not pay increases for workers in existing roles.

“If you look at overall wage growth and compare it to inflation, we’re still not really seeing much of an increase at all,” Jericho said.

“It seems very much that overall wage growth has peaked at around 4.1 per cent at the end of last year and into this year … and inflation [is] at 3.8 [per cent].

“Inflation will go down, and it’s hoped that wage growth will go down a bit slower … The important thing to remember is that overall wages, in real terms, are about 5 per cent lower than they were before the pandemic, so there’s a long way to catch up and recover all the lost purchasing power.”

He warned while business groups may use Seek’s latest findings to attempt to pin the blame for inflation on higher wages, prices set by businesses over the past three years were a bigger driver of inflation.

“It is only right that now after three years of, in a sense, real wage destruction, that workers are able to start recovering some of their lost real wages,” Jericho said.