WAGE AND SALARY EARNERS 2003-04 TO 2006-07

Estimates of Wage and salary income at small area level (including SLAs and LGAs) for each year from 2003-04 to 2006-07 have recently been compiled by the ABS from aggregate data sourced from the Australian Taxation Office's (ATO) Individual Income Tax Return Database. The data items compiled by the ABS using the ATO data relate to income standards the ABS uses for its income surveys that are defined in the Explanatory Notes of Wage and Salary Earner Statistics for Small Areas, Time Series, 2003-04 to 2006-07 (cat. no. 5673.0.55.003) .

In 2006-07, Wages and salaries were the largest component of income accounting for $95.3 billion, or 77.8% of all income earned by Victorian tax payers. On average, Victorians earned $41,260 in Wages and salaries in 2006-07; an increase of 3.5% since 2005-06. This commentary does not take into account the effect of inflation.

Between 2003-04 and 2006-07 the average annual growth rate in average Wage and salary income in Victoria was 3.8%, compared to 4.5% for Australia.

In the following comments, Wage and salary income was classified in accordance with the 2006 Census categories of Lower (average annual income less than $20,800), Medium ($20,800-$52,000) and Higher (Over $52,000) Incomes. The higher income category has been further divided into $52,000-$83,200 and $83,200 and over. For more information see: (Wage and Salary Earners Statistics for Small areas, Time Series, 2003-04 to 2006-07 (cat. no. 5673.0.55.003)).

In Victoria, between 2003-04 and 2006-07, the proportion of Wage and salary earners in the Lower income group fell by 2.4 percentage points. There was also a decrease in the proportion of Wage and salary earners in the Medium income group of 3.6 percentage points. Over the same period, the proportion of Wage and salary earners in the higher two income divisions ($52,000-$83,200 and over $83,200) increased by 3.5 and 2.5 percentage points respectively.

The following graph shows the distribution of Wage and salary earners in Victoria by age group for the lowest and highest income ranges. It shows that a large proportion (36.1%) of people who earned less than $20,800 were aged between 15 and 24 years, while two thirds of people (66.4%) who earned more than $83,200 were aged 35-54 years.

There were differences in the Wages and salaries earned by males and females in Victoria in 2006-07, with a total of 148,500 males (12.4%) earning more than $83,200 compared to 33,600 females (3.0%). In addition, 37.1% of females earned less than $20,800 compared to 23.0% of males.

Of the people in Melbourne who earned over $83,200, the majority (80.4%) were male. This was also the case outside of the Melbourne area, with 88.5% of people who earned in excess of $83,200 being male.

Among the LGAs in the Melbourne area, Bayside had the highest ($60,138) and Greater Dandenong had the lowest ($34,935) average Wage and salary income in 2006-07. In total, there were 40,300 Wage and salary earners in Bayside and 54,300 in Greater Dandenong. The higher average Wage and salary income observed in Bayside when compared to Greater Dandenong may be explained by the larger proportion of Managers and Administrators (19.2% compared to 5.4%), and Professionals (27.4% compared to 11.1%) in Bayside.

In terms of income distribution, 30.3% of Wage and salary earners in Greater Dandenong, earned less than $20,800 and half (50.1%) earned between $20,800 to $52,000. In Bayside, a similar proportion ( 29.2%) of Wage and salary earners earned less than $20,800, however a smaller proportion (32.0%) earned between $20,800 to $52,000. A much higher proportion of Wage and salary earners in Bayside earned over $83,200, 19.2% compared to 3.3% in Greater Dandenong.

For LGAs outside of the Melbourne area, Wage and salary earners in Macedon Ranges LGA had the highest average Wage and salary income ($42,745) and Buloke LGA had the lowest ($26,813). The number of Wage and salary earners in these two LGAs were 18,000 and 2,500 respectively.

The distribution of Wage and salary earners across different occupational groups were similar for these two LGAs, except that a large proportion of Wage and salary earners in Buloke were in the occupational category of Labour and Related Workers (21.8% compared to 8.5% in Macedon Ranges) .

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