Plan B Forum

The average wage in Canberra has now hit more than $83,000 a year, and is accelerating faster than anywhere else in the country, new figures show.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics published today show that the average weekly wage for an adult working full time, not including overtime, in Canberra was a seasonally adjusted $1602.50, or $83,330 a year, in the May quarter.

That is a 3 per cent increase on the three months to February, the biggest rise in the country, and much faster than the 0.4 per cent increase for the nation as a whole. Annual growth is the second highest, behind the Northern Territory.

Nationally, the average wage is $70,262 a year, or $1351 a week. People working in the public sector continue to earn more than those in the private sector, bringing home $75,426 and $68,853 a year respectively.
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Both men and women have higher average wages in the ACT than any other jurisdiction.

Men in Canberra bring home an average $88,608 a year, or $1704 a week, and women get $76,861, or $1478 a week. These are 8.1 per cent and 5.4 per cent higher than a year ago, respectively.

Nationally, miners continue to have the biggest pay packets and they are growing faster than in most other sectors. Miners earn an average $118,160 a year, up 7.1 per cent on a year ago in unadjusted terms.

People working in the wholesale trade, up 8.9 per cent to $71,911, and transport, postal and warehousing, up 9.7 per cent to $70,918, industries also recorded big increases in average pay.

Conversely, average pays fell in the health care and social assistance and manufacturing sectors. Health care and social assistance workers' average pay dropped 1.2 per cent to $64,464, and in the manufacturing sector wages were down 0.4 per cent to $61,074 – close to half a miner's average pay packet.

Wages were also effectively unchanged, at $60,892, in the arts and recreation industry.

By comparison, prices increased by 1.2 per cent in the year to July, according to the latest consumer price index.

The Federal Government will fast-track the assessment process for skilled US workers coming to Australia.

Under the agreement, US tradespeople will able to complete a skills assessment before coming to Australia.

It will mean faster processing times for 457 visa applicants and better job security for US workers wanting to come here.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says it is important for Australia to attract workers with the right skills.

"There are economies and countries around the world which are facing very difficult and different circumstances to ours," he said.

"What's appropriate is that we work together with those countries to ensure that skilled workers who are looking for work have the capacity to fill some of those gaps we are facing in Australia."

The changes are designed to deal with the skills shortage in the construction and resources industries.

We speak a version of English.

rubato wrote:Short change compared to Norway:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/busin ... wanted=all
"...
Norway’s oil and gas workers are already among the world’s best paid, making an average of $157,000 a year, according to the industry association. And while offshore laborers work only about 16 weeks a year, they cite tough conditions in their call for an earlier retirement age.
... "

$157,000/ yr for 16 weeks = $471,000/yr for a US worker with only 4 weeks off a year.

yrs,
rubato

rubato wrote:Canberra altitude = 606 meters. 1987 feet. ?? Not what anyone would call high.

Even in this dry season, with its generous parks and open space browned off by months without rain, Darwin is a picture to behold. Looking out over the Arafura Sea, towards an Asia that increasingly is its natural economic fit and bathed in unfailing 30-degree temperatures and azure skies, Australia's most northern capital projects a calm nonchalance, a sort of manana without the sense of urgency, an ideal antidote to the rip and rush of southern life.



It's a picture that belies reality, however. The Northern Territory, and particularly its capital, is being asked to make its most dramatic shift since cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin on Christmas Eve, 1974.

The lifestyle for which so many Darwinites chose to eschew points south and to take up residence remote from family, friends and past is under challenge by resource-mania, a headlong rush to grab some of the spoils lavished for decades on the neighbours to the west and the east - Western Australia and Queensland.


A $34 billion investment is in progress to pump gas condensate 885 kilometres from the Browse Basin off the Kimberley coast to Darwin, where it can be converted to liquefied natural gas (LNG) for shipping to Japan. The Ichthys project, by its Japanese owner Inpex, comes on top of the existing ConocoPhillips onshore processing of gas from the Timor Sea, and is the heftiest addition to a grand plan to make Darwin a rival to the North West Shelf as a gas hub. For all of Darwin's false starts, for all the hype over three decades, that Darwin was about to score a future beyond the roles of northern administrator and defence bulwark (it's biggest employers), Darwin's time in the economic glow of what Australia does best may eventually have arrived.


Darwin incomes have a healthy premium above the national average but housing affordability is every bit the nightmare of Sydney and other costs of living reflect its isolation and lack of competition.

Chris Delaney shifted from Melbourne for two years to practise law and for his wife, Lynette, to teach. That was 22 years ago. A Vietnam veteran who serves in Norforce, a mostly Aboriginal reservist outfit, he argues appalling indigenous living conditions will remain while education in remote communities sticks with priorities not sensitive to cultural need. But his experience is positive. "My wife describes it as a Victorian country town with palm trees. It's got a vibrant social life, emphasising the outdoors, and it's a great place to raise kids,'' he says.

"A dining experience here used to be a lump of steak, but international cuisine influences are now everywhere." Darwin has 56 nationalities. It's where the first boat people arrived and where many asylum seekers are incarcerated, and it was the destination for many fleeing East Timorese. Perhaps Barack Obama's visit to Darwin last November, when he saluted the arrival of the first of 2500 US marines, aroused a sense of Darwin's national significance. Or perhaps it was the summit last month with the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who joked Darwin was a fitting venue given that most Indonesians' impression of Australia was formed watching Crocodile Dundee.

rubato wrote:Canberra altitude = 606 meters. 1987 feet. ?? Not what anyone would call high.



yrs,
rubato

The Hen wrote:Highest wages, highest petrol costs, highest food costs, highest housing costs.

Highest altitude city as well.

We are all high here in Canberra.

Everything balances out in the end.

Gob wrote:

rubato wrote:Short change compared to Norway:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/busin ... wanted=all
"...
Norway’s oil and gas workers are already among the world’s best paid, making an average of $157,000 a year, according to the industry association. And while offshore laborers work only about 16 weeks a year, they cite tough conditions in their call for an earlier retirement age.
... "

$157,000/ yr for 16 weeks = $471,000/yr for a US worker with only 4 weeks off a year.

yrs,
rubato

Why would "$157,000/ yr for 16 weeks = $471,000/yr for a US worker"? That makes no sense.

rubato wrote:

The Hen wrote:Highest wages, highest petrol costs, highest food costs, highest housing costs.

Highest altitude city as well.

We are all high here in Canberra.

Everything balances out in the end.

Trouble reading again?

yrs,
rubato

Highest wages, highest petrol costs, highest food costs, highest housing costs.

Highest altitude city as well.

We are all high here in Canberra.