The forecasts tell a sad story. According to Scott Morrison back in 2016, we should currently be enjoying wages growth of 2.75% — pathetically low by the standards of the recent years. A year later, he downgraded that to 2.5%. And last December, nearly half way through 2017-18, he dropped that to 2.25%.

With just one quarter to go, we’re currently on 2.1%. And private sector workers can only dream of 2.25% — they’re on 1.9%. Many working in big industries like construction are seeing shrinking real wages despite our low inflation rate. The Reserve Bank is suggesting 2% might be the new speed limit for wages growth.

Make no mistake, this is a colossal failing by the governing class, one conveniently made in the interests of corporations. It has been an extended triumph of self-serving optimism over reality. Wages growth is just around the corner, the government, Treasury and the Reserve Bank have said for years. And quarter after quarter, just like yesterday, the data has shown them to be wrong. Still, policymakers have insisted, there’s nothing faulty with their models — they’ve just had to tweak them. The latest idea is that our historic level of jobs growth, held to be the precursor to a return to wage rises, has not been enough to use up spare capacity, which might be greater than previously realised.

The problem with that argument is that the foreign experience debunks it. Look no further than across the ditch. Our Kiwi cousins have unemployment of just 4.4% and a participation rate a whopping five points higher than us. Their wages growth is worse. Even in the US, with record low unemployment, annual wages growth declined in April to 2.6%. Workers actually went backwards in real terms in that month.

Expect policymakers to cling to their models, though, because the alternative is too unpalatable. The alternative is to admit that the ACTU, and many labour economists, are right that there’s been a secular change in the power balance between labour and capital, to the advantage of the latter, which has made it far more difficult for workers to secure decent pay rises. That the constant growth in concentration across so many industries in recent decades has created corporations with enough market power to dictate terms to workers and consumers, especially when they can get politicians to do their bidding, as the big banks did.

And that in sectors where large corporations don’t exercise that power — like, hmmm, let’s say, health and education — you might expect wages growth to be higher.

There are other theories. Employer group AIG yesterday released a paper arguing that, in addition to spare capacity, the primary reason for wage stagnation was weak productivity growth — i.e. it’s workers’ fault they’re not getting pay rises, because they’re not working hard and smart enough. But in a display of the adage that discretion is the better part of valour, the paper does not offer the traditional AIG solution to weak productivity growth and spare capacity — industrial relations deregulation. Some bright spark realised that it wouldn’t be a good look arguing that the way for workers to get higher wages would be to allow employers more power to slash wages.

The AIG is on a roll: earlier this week it urged the Fair Work Commission not to grant a substantial pay rise to low paid workers because it would move them into higher tax brackets. Such noble concern for the impact of bracket creep — it wants a mere 1.8% wage rise. No chance of bracket creep there. Indeed, that’s less than the current inflation rate and well below the higher inflation rate expected in coming quarters. At least it’s better than the National Retailers Association, which told the Fair Work Commission there should be no increase at all in the annual wage case.

Here’s a prediction: wage stagnation will continue. Corporations will enjoy healthy profits while forcing workers to endure real wages cuts and zero growth. It will become normalised. We’ll get used to growth with a two and even a one in front of it when we were used to 3-4%. But it will keep on feeding into the deep-seated disenchantment that voters feel about an economic system that works for the wealthy and corporations, not them. And that will keep driving what business laments as the ill-advised “populism” of the electorate and politicians that exploit it.