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Today’s national accounts data for the quarter and year to June 30 is mainly of historical interest, particularly given the Reserve Bank has punished households with 2.25 percentage points of rate rises since May, meaning the current year may be very different.

The economy grew 0.9% in the three months to June, and 3.6% year on year.

One important input to the GDP number, however, is of more than historical interest. The wage share of total income fell to another record low in the June quarter: just 48.5%.

The profit share of total income surged by more than a whole percentage point to a new record: 32.9%.

Why? The Business Indicators data from Tuesday, which were an important input to the national accounts, showed that company gross operating profits (a particular way of measuring corporate profitability for the national accounts) rose 7.6% seasonally adjusted, which was more than double the 3.3% rise wages and salaries rose 3.3% seasonally adjusted.

But more importantly the 12-month figures for the 2021-22 financial year show that company gross operating profits were up 28.5% while wages and salaries were up just 6.8%. Wages and salaries aren’t comparable to the wage price index, but they’re still a useful comparative indicator.

Much of the rise in corporate earnings was due to the surge in prices for thermal coal, oil and gas (profits in manufacturing and logistics were also up strongly, but they’re small beer compared with mining and energy). But we haven’t seen the likes of Woodside, BHP, Santos, Beach Energy, Whitehaven — the windfall winners from the invasion of Ukraine — sharing any of their good fortune with their employees, except those in executive suites or boardrooms.

That profits/wages contrast further adds to the historical imbalance between the wages and profits share of total factor income. June was only the fourth quarter in history when the wage share was below 50% and the first time it was below 40%.

It was also good news for business on the productivity front: real unit labour costs fell 1.6% in the quarter and 4.8% through the year. So much for a tight labour market.

Two measures of wages or employee earnings in the national accounts are COE (Compensation of Employees) and AENA (Average Earnings National Accounts). Both are pretty blunt measures — COE measures the total remuneration to employees for work done and AENA is COE divided by the total number of employees. COE does include irregular payments to employees such as bonuses — so all those bonuses that keep being reported should be in the figures.

COE rose 2.4% in the final quarter, which was the highest since the September, 2010 quarter — but that was helped by a 2.9% rise in hours worked (fewer COVID lockdowns) and a 0.9% rise in the total number of people employed. Strikingly, private COE rose 3.1% while public COE by just 0.4%, showing the public sector wages are still holding back wages growth.

But the big issue in the Australian economy remains the power of capital versus that of labour — and the huge imbalance between the two.