李玲玲/國企三/108212068

CH24 相關時事分析報告
Inflation, cost-of-living increases leave people struggling to afford everyday items
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-22/getting-left-behind-as-the-cost-of-living-goes-
up/100927776

the news is talking about the inflation that happen in Australia. Australian struggling to afford
everyday items, for example ms Hay who are a single mom and a nurse haven’t been able to
keep up with the cost living regardless of working full-time. She even working on the weekends
but still doesn’t cover everything she need. Her biggest worry is not being able to afford to
continue paying rent, and not being able to afford to continue paying bills.
In WA (Western Australia) last year, inflation ran at 5.7 per cent while wages only grew at 2 per
cent. This was despite low unemployment, which usually would push wages up.
The WA state government is now set to introduce a 2.5 per cent per year pay increase, with
either a $1,000 one-off payment or an additional 0.25 per cent, which it says will provide CPI
wage rises to more than 150,000 public sector employees.
But the United Workers Union says this will equate to less than $40 a week before tax over two
years for the vast majority of their members.
The price inflation without income inflation means most of people fall behind. This situation
make it hard for people to afford their living cost with their current pay mostly have bigger
impact on low-income households and households with fixed incomes. So many question to why
wages aren’t rising, according to the Reserve Bank there’s clearly a structural issue with our
labour market, which means that wages just simply aren't flowing through. There are a lot of
reasons for that — public-sector wage policies, which are suppressing wages, we also have a
wage-setting mechanism that is relatively slow.
So, how high should we expect inflation to go?
It depends a lot on how long the crisis in Ukraine lasts, because petrol prices are the big part of
inflation that currently happen which affected a lot of other good’s price.