wagepriceindex.com Australia's wage and price indexes, charted and computed — every figure traceable to its ABS source

Methodology & sources

Where the data comes from

Every number on this site comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics: the Wage Price Index, Australia (catalogue 6345.0) and the Consumer Price Index, Australia (catalogue 6401.0). We ingest each release twice over: once from the ABS Data API, and once from the time-series spreadsheets published with the release. The two channels must agree before anything is published here — if they don't, the update is rejected and the previous release keeps serving.

Traceability

Each series we publish carries its full citation: the exact API query, the dated ABS release page, the table number, the legacy ABS series ID, and a checksum of the spreadsheet it appears in. The figures currently served come from the March quarter 2026 WPI release (release page, Table 1, series A2713849C) and the CPI Table 17 series A2325846C (release page).

How the calculator works

For a wage w between two quarter boundaries, the wage-indexed figure is w × (index at end ÷ index at start), computed within a single series from a single release. The WPI figure uses total hourly rates of pay excluding bonuses, all sectors, seasonally adjusted, Australia. The buying-power figure applies the same arithmetic to the All groups CPI (original, weighted average of eight capital cities). Real wage change is the ratio of the two: (WPI ratio ÷ CPI ratio) − 1.

Dates are offered as quarters because that is the indexes' granularity — finer dates would imply precision the data doesn't have. Within a quarter, the WPI's survey reference date is the last pay period ending on or before the third Friday of the quarter's middle month (per the ABS methodology), while the CPI reflects prices collected across the whole quarter.

What the WPI is (and isn't)

The WPI tracks hourly wages across the economy for the same jobs over time — changes in what jobs pay, not changes in what people earn as they move between jobs or hours change. It shows what the average wage did; any individual job can differ.

Licence

ABS material is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. This site is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the ABS.

Data vintages currently served: WPI mar-2026, CPI apr-2026.