South Australian public servants are 10% worse off now than they were five years ago, despite the state’s booming economy, according to new research by The Australia Institute.
SA’s 2024/2025 budget papers laud the state’s economic growth as “the number one performing economy in the nation”.
In per capita terms, South Australia’s prosperity has improved twice as fast as the national average.
Yet, new research reveals state funding for services and infrastructure has not kept up with this growth.
State public sector workers have borne the brunt of this restraint: their wages have lagged far behind inflation, resulting in a painful real wage cut for thousands of employees.
South Australia enjoys a stable, diversified economic base and the state’s labour market has been operating at or near-record low levels of unemployment.
Unfortunately, this economic progress has not been reflected in improvements in state-funded public services.
A new research report by the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute shows that real wages for state public servants in SA have declined by as much as 10% since 2019.
“This represents a one-tenth reduction in the real purchasing power of their salaries, imposing severe financial stress on tens of thousands of households – and undermining consumer spending and economic growth,” said Jack Thrower, Research Economist at The Australia Institute.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. South Australia has abundant fiscal capacity to repair this damage to real compensation for public sector workers.
“Rebuilding public employees’ wages to catch up to past inflation should be a vital priority for the South Australian government.”
