Australia’s key wages measure is out, softer than expected by 0.1% Q/Q, watched by the RBA (AUD is softer on the release)

Australia’s key wages measure has been released which is the wage price index, for Q1. 

Earlier, analysts at Westpac Banking Corporation explained that last week, the RBA said, “strong employment growth over the past year or so has led to some pick-up in wages growth, which is a welcome development.”  The analysts explained that this refers to the rise from the multi-decade lows of 1.9%yr in 2016/17 to 2.3% by end-2018, noting that this is still a long way from the 3.5%yr pace the RBA has indicated is consistent with its inflation target. 

Expectations were as follows:

• QTR/QTR: 0.6%
• Y/Y: 2.3% 

The data has arrived as follows:

QTR/QTR: 0.5% - a miss.

Y/Y: 2.3%

"It is an important release but rarely moves AUD since it normally prints very close to expectations," the Westpac analysts added.

AUD/USD is down by 10pips on the knee jerk.