As Australia lags, wages in these countries are growing

Australia is trailing behind when it comes to new research on what workers are paid.

The OECD Employment Outlook 2024 looks at developments in the labour market in its 35 member countries.

It listed nations where real wages are growing and countries where they are still below their pre-pandemic, 2019 level.

Real wages are the hourly rate of pay adjusted for inflation.

Real wage growth was positive in 29 nations and below the 2019 level in 16 of them.

Click through to see the countries where real wages grew the most - and where Australia came.

Luxembourg had a positive growth in real wages, but only by two per cent.

Year-on-year, they grew by 2.3 per cent.

Workers in the UK have had a boost of 3.1 per cent in real wages.

Year-on-year, they're up by 1.8 per cent.

Austrian workers have seen wages rise by 3.5 per cent since 2019.

They've gone up year-on-year by even more - 5.4 per cent according to the survey.

Greek workers are benefiting by wages that are 3.6 per cent up since 2019.

That's the same amount they've also gone up year-on-year.

Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is paying workers more - 4.6 per cent since 2019 and 6.3 per cent year-on-year.

Costa Rica has seen a 5.1 per cent increase in wages since 2019.

It topped the chart for wage rises year-on-year, with a big 16.5 per cent rise.

Mexican workers' wages are up 5. 4 per cent since the end of 2019.

Year-on-year increases were 5.7 per cent.

Workers in Portugal saw a cumulative wage rise since 19 of 5.5 per cent.

Year-on-year, the figure was three per cent.

Iceland came next, with wage rises of 5.7 per cent since 2019, and 3.2 per cent year-on-year, the poll discovered.

South Korea's wages rose by 6.2 per cent since 2019, according to the survey.



Despite the ongoing conflict, Israel workers are getting a rise in their real wages.

They're up by 6.8 per cent since the third quarter of 2019.

Year-on-year though, they only went up 1.7 per cent.

In Latvia, the real wage rise has been 8.2 per cent for hourly pay.

Year-on-year the number was even higher- 11.7 per cent.

Workers in Slovenia are better off, with pay rising 9.2 per cent in terms of real wages.

They were up 6.2 per cent year-on-year.

Poland workers saw real wages grow by 9.3 per cent since the last quarter of 2019.

They were up year on year by 10.6 per cent.

Hungary saw wages rise 13.5 per cent since the end of 2019.

Year-on-year, they were up by 10 per cent.

With a real hourly wage growth of 16.5 per cent Lithuania topped the chart.

Year-on-year, wages were up 10.9 per cent in the nation.

In Australia, the percentage change of real hourly wages is down by minus 4.8 per cent since the first quarter of 2024.

Year-on-year, it's down half a per cent.

Australia is slightly ahead of Finland, New Zealand, Italy, Czechia and Sweden which saw greater falls in real wage growth.

But it's behind the likes of Denmark, Canada Spain, Switzerland, Japan and Germany, which also had negative real wage growth.