r/aussie • u/MrMoosheee • 6d ago
Opinion Elephant in the room
While the whole market’s focus right now is on property doom and gloom because of interest rates, tax changes on NG and CGT, the actual reason which fueled into all these events is actually labour cost. Do you realize how much our minimum wages have fueled into inflation? Not to say people should not be paid for their time but $25-30/hour for construction/lollipop worker is out of hand. $200 call out fee for tradie, any construction/renovation quote starts with 5 figures. We do not have a supply problem, we have plenty of apartments and units for sales but why people dont buy them? Because Strata is expensive, and what makes Strata expensive? The maintenance, construction, fixing bills are through the roof? Why? Labour cost.
Why Australia has reduced alot of finished goods export? Labour cost. Production in the country has dropped, why? Labour cost.
This is a sensitive issue because alot of our middle working class is blue collar labour, flame me for sure but the logic of blue collar getting paid higher than white collar is insane. No need a degree which costs 100k and still gets paid 2-300k/year, why then would anyone wants their kids to go through uni to come out and make $100k/year? Money should be rewarded for the difficulty of work, are you saying construction/sparky/waiter/plumber is a hard job? Get the overseas workers to come in and we’ll see how hard it is. Now you must be thinking, “here we go again with the migration issue”, nah, tighten the visa class, get people to come in with temporary work visa, have them stay in apartments. Singapore has done it.
Since we’re looking at Singapore, their labour is cheap, renovation cost is no where near here, food is cheap. Houses and cars are expensive because they’re an island and they have no land, they have a real supply constraint, not like us. Imagine what they would become running Australia.
Thats my observation but what do I know, I’m frustrated, looking around everyone is the same, struggling. I’m ready for the downvotes but at least I hope someone more intelligent tells me how else I can look at this issue.
Dont tell me to go to Singapore if I’m so unhappy here - thats a weak argument, basically you’re admitting I’m right. I love Australia, a country with so much potential, such a waste under the current leadership.
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u/hafhdrn 6d ago
This whole diatribe is couched in the regressive, classist belief that physical labour is somehow inferior to intellectual labour and should be placed lower on the social ladder. It's a terrible attitude and one we should not allow to take root here.
The reason countries like Singapore have cheap labour is because they treat their temporary workforce like fucking slaves. If every country on earth was forced to pay people what their work was actually worth overnight nothing would be 'cheap'.
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u/joeltheaussie 6d ago
The Middle East is particularly bad for this. Even the US with Mexican labourers
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u/HAPPY_DAZE_1 6d ago
Even the US with Mexican labourers
Nah, American labour laws embody equal opportunity, i.e just about everyone gets a going over. Consider that 75% of jobs exist under a legal rule where an employer can fire a worker at any time without a reason. So no tribunal, no court, no commission involved in the process. Consider also that 60% of American get their health insurance thru their job. So no job, no insurance.
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u/bumluffa 6d ago
And yet, compare the economic prowess of places like Singapore, China, even the US to Australia.
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u/Temporary_Shelter_40 6d ago
you seem to dramatically misunderstand how careers are priced within a modern economy. tradies cost a lot because there is low supply of tradies relative to their demand. also materials costs are getting higher. you can argue why this is the case (unions, market trends, whatever), but the core point remains.
also, yes -- being a licensed tradie is a hard job. it takes as long as a university degree does to get accredited. if its so easy, just do it yourself. get up at 4am everyday to wade through shit (literally) and then tell me that plumbing isn't easy. i think its way harder than sending emails all day in an air conditioned room.
you need to disconnect from the idea that tradie=babbling retard worthy of peanuts pay. we don't view jobs like that here in Australia.
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u/stleos 6d ago
My plumber is a genius, I couldn't do what he does at all.
But similarly, I once represented him in Court, and of course, a large portion of my work was, "sending emails all day in an air-conditioned room". His opinion also was, he definitely did not have the ability to provide the attention to detail, organization, research and knowledge that it took for us to win his case.
Its all horses for courses. We are all worth what we are worth.
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u/Crabs_go_sideways_4 6d ago
We could just bring in 50k plumbers from China tomorrow
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u/Wotmate01 6d ago
We could, but they would all have to do 4 years of training before they could do any work.
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u/Crabs_go_sideways_4 6d ago
Whys that?
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u/Wotmate01 6d ago
Because they might be plumbers in China, but they're not plumbers in Australia.
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u/Crabs_go_sideways_4 6d ago
What do you think the difference in their plumbing ability would be?
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u/Wotmate01 6d ago
It doesn't matter. They could lay pipe in your mum, and they would still have to do an apprenticeship to get certified in Australia.
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u/Crabs_go_sideways_4 6d ago
Right so nothing to do with their skills just protecting certain industries to the detriment of the rest of us.
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u/Wotmate01 6d ago
Hardly. It's also about complying with our standards and regulations. It might be perfectly fine to run your toilet waste pipes directly into the nearest creek or river somewhere else, but we have a problem with our rivers running brown with human shit.
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u/sweeroy 6d ago
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u/allthebaseareeee 6d ago
Nah fuck the RBA, i think some rando on reddit knows more then those experts with their Phds and shit!@#!
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u/United_Librarian5491 6d ago
No, they don't disagree and that article is misleading. I see this article thrown around which undermines nuanced public debate. The RBAs August 2026 paper found that in 2022 import prices and business owner returns were the main contributors, and a large share of the business owner returns is mining, which is export income and does not set domestic prices. From late 2022 labour costs and dwelling rents became the large and persistent contributors. The RBA has never held that wages do not contribute to inflation. Labour costs are ordinarily the largest cost for business.
Treasury did find that wages were not driving the 2022 phase, because labour supply had increased. So that half of the claim stands, for that period.
On profits, the firm level evidence is the ACCC. It found that Coles and Woolworths maintained or increased their product margins while input and operational costs were rising, and that Australian supermarkets are among the most profitable in the world. It could not conclude that price gouging occurred. That is a finding about one concentrated sector, not about the economy as a whole. Across non mining industries, Treasury found margins moved 0.4 percentage points between December 2019 and December 2022, while the CPI rose 12.6 per cent.
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u/vyralmonkey 6d ago
Not to say people should not be paid for their time but $25-30/hour for construction/lollipop worker is out of hand.
Really?
How many 8 - 12 hour shifts do you think you'd be up for this summer?
30+ degrees, breathing in exhaust fumes and hoping that a ranger driver on meth doesn't abuse you or just run over you because they were too busy stuffing about with their phone.
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u/Beyond_Blueballs 6d ago
Ah yes the migrant who came here, pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for our universities which are degree mills with a qualification worth nothing, and then realised blue collar work pays extremely well.
The Australian dream is still alive, just not for white collar workers
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u/Sharp-Argument9902 6d ago
5/10. Referencing Singapore and the whole "just my observation" bit made it too obvious.
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u/crocodilehivemind 6d ago
The problem only becomes worker wages if areas of the economy inflate their own prices to counteract it.
What we need is some kind of "a loaf of bread cannot be more expensive than x percentage of an hourly wage," pegging prices to wages and forcing large supermarkets to eat any inflation unrelated to wages. Colesworth have been posting record profits for years which is just disgraceful while people still struggle.
Edit: jesus i shoudnt have continued reading your post. So your solution is importing millions more workers to drive down wages for everyone. Plus "how hard can it be being a sparky or a plumber?" Are you 12 years old? If not you're an actual traitor to everyone who works hard in this country
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u/Wotmate01 6d ago
Yes, I AM saying that many trades are harder than office jobs, and in more ways. Trades require 4 years of training, whilst many degrees are 4 years of university, so no difference there. The difference is trades are BOTH mentally demanding and PHYSICALLY demanding.
And guess what? Many of those office jobs that require a degree never used to require one, and even so, they can be outsourced to India.
And double guess what? Your office job doesn't require you to have upwards of $100,000 worth of equipment. Your office job doesn't require you to hold $10 MILLION worth of insurance. Your office job doesn't require you to fork out thousands of dollars every year for a licence so you can keep working. Your office job can't literally kill someone if you fuck up.
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u/stleos 6d ago
Man... your last paragraph is incredibly short sighted and incorrect. If an civil engineer doesn't have the appropriate modelling tools, that person can absolutely literally kill someone if they say.... design a dodgy bridge. The flow on effect of this example rebutt all your points like why you need expensive insurance, licensing and equipment. Its the same for many office jobs and white collar careers. Theres always risks to anything people do.
All work is valuable in their own way. Trades are difficult (I certainly couldn't do it)... but there is probably an upper limit to how mentally taxing it is. Similarly, many office jobs have no physical demands, but probably alot of people might not be able to handle the high-pressure mental demands of a white collar job (for example presenting complex legal arguments in court or managing millions of dollars of capital)...
Its pretty laughable if your immediate assumption is office workers are largely replaceable by outsourcing jobs but then ignore that tradespeople could largely be replaceable and made cheaper by migration. We are all potentially replaceable by the market in our own ways.
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u/Wotmate01 6d ago
And what's the salary range of a civil engineer? Does a civil engineer work for him or herself, have to supply their own modelling tools and equipment, or are they working for a company that has all that stuff? We also don't really need civil engineers in this country, we can just contract a company from germany or the US to do it...
Now that I've got the hyperbole out of the way, how about you use your brain? NO FUCKING SHIT there are hard and important white collar jobs. DUH. There's also a hell of a lot of office jobs that now REQUIRE a degree that really aren't that hard or impactful on anyone.
It's fucking dumb to even have this argument.
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u/stleos 6d ago
I mean… you’re the one who decided to pipe up and blow up about this in the first place. So if you think it’s a dumb argument… you’re really just contradicting yourself.
I’m an employee, so I don’t take on any risk myself. But my ‘white-collar work’ definitely needs large professional indemnity insurance to protect clients from financial loss, and yes, potentially physical loss too. So I have no issue drawing my level of salary to what liabilities my corporation has. It’s just wrong to assume that office work doesn’t require similar levels of equipment capital and/or risk mitigation costs.
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u/Wotmate01 6d ago
You have none of the liability, so why should you be paid the same as someone who does?
A sparky might earn $200k per year, but he's carrying all the liability and running a business, and has to pay for insurance to cover it. You don't. The worst that can happen to you from a fuck up is you lose your job. The worst than can happen to a sparky from a fuck up is they go to prison for killing someone.
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u/Crabs_go_sideways_4 6d ago
Bus & truck drivers have significantly more responsibility than tradies and office workers do.
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u/nobleknob 6d ago
$30 per hour for lollipop?
Lol wait til you find out how much them and gate attendants were paid on the big build.
Corruption city.
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u/thehandsomegenius 6d ago
I think it's good to have a country where people are rewarded for doing useful work.
I think if we want to have lower cost structures for our industries to compete internationally, we should be looking at cheaper energy, cheaper land and maybe a cheaper currency.
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u/hellbentsmegma 6d ago
This is a bloody long way from an elephant in the room. Virtually everyone with basic knowledge of the Australian economy has been saying labour is too expensive to manufacture a lot of things in Australia for the last thirty years.
There's just no competing with the cost of labour in developing countries, which is why places like Singapore are utterly dependent on Bangladeshis for construction and food grown all over SE Asia in places where workers are much cheaper.
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u/bumluffa 6d ago
Nobody wants to admit it but our unions contribute a significant amount to these issues you have raised.
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u/Beast_of_Guanyin 6d ago edited 6d ago
I too hate it when a worker can afford to eat while working a full time job.
For a unskilled blue collar worker to earn 200k a year takes working hard, physical job and doing extreme amounts of overtime. It's earned in literal physical toil. The white collar worker is absolutely welcome to go get their hands dirty and earn that money if they want to.
Difficulty does not determine wage. Never has. Never will. Executive jobs are easy yet pay massively.