I'm not interested in any relevant comparisons to Canada, I'm not sure why you even dragged them into it - it's a similar sized economy but there's just no comparison in my opinion.
Where does the graph show 4% annual growth? The ABS places our official wages growth for 2018 at 2.3% but if you remove the public sector it falls well below 2% (around 1.8%), well below the current official rate of inflation. What are the drivers that will suddenly make wages break-out to more than 4%+? Unions are pretty much non-existent so there's nothing going to happen on the industrial front, we're importing 300,000 new Australians every year and have something 1.5 million 'guest' workers here so there's very little actual shortage of workers despite the official unemployment rate hovering around 5%.
Ever since Hawke we've been purposely engineering a system that crimped union power and made strike action pretty much illegal anyway - now they're desperately trying to find a way to increase them and can't.
Not interested in to quote you "
relevant Comparisons", seriously? You don't want to see comparisons with Australia from economies that are very similar to the Australia economy? Surely that's very narrow minded if doesn't suit your narrative?
YOUR graph showed the 4% YOY increases!
Removing the public sector during the period of 4% YOU increasing will show a much higher number.
Who said we will see 4% YOY increases again soon? I didn't.
Don, the purpose of my previous post was to demonstrate that 2003 (the year prior to the mining boom), wages in the private sector were in unsustainable growth rates to 2008 and again post GFC through to 2013 and by unsustainable I'm meaning above CPI. Commonsense dictates that if you keep paying more than CPI you are driving up the cost of doing business and you need an offset in reduced workers, increased productivity or brand loyalty or combination of all 3. What the Germans have achieved in enabling them to still make cars competitively in Germany.
Without such an off-set, then sooner or later after a number of years of YOY wages growth above CPI to remain in business you MUST see wages deflation. Canada achieved this through use of a recession (why I posted that to quote you "relevant Comparsons" of Canada to Australia) and Australia is achieving by a prolonged period of wages stagnation.
Now if you can find another way of wages growth above inflation to be sustained and business to remain in business, then please share! Unfortunately Australia's worker productivity has not improved as you can see in the trend in trading economics, site. What I didn't mention above was lowering of $A would obviously be an external off-set as as basically you are paid in $US, the lower dollar has enabled some sectors to again start growing, ie mining or anything exporting.
I've said repeatedly over last few years, if your salary for doing the same job as you were doing in 2003 is above your 2003 income with CPI factored in, you should be worried about your job.
Now if you have any more "relevant Comparisons", please share.
Oh, why pick 2003, because 2003 was the end of a sustained "normal growth" period that went back nearly 10 years, ie wages rose mostly in proportion with CPI, there was no significant booms or busts.