Either there have been a lot of unnoticed layoffs in banking and finance lately or those fortunate to have a job are being paid less. It looks like the latter.
And it looks like some are being paid quite a lot less.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday introduced its first issue of the Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator.
The indicator is an experimental estimate of employee earnings, sourced from Single Touch Payroll data, and is likely to prove a bonanza.
Wages and salaries paid by employers in the finance sector fell by 4.9 per cent in the month of April 2023.
Since there were no firings in any grand number (outside of fintech) you can only infer that the payroll cost lever is being pulled in banking, insurance and wealth management.
Either that, or an awful lot of finance brokers are going broke.
Yeah, this is a novel series and one month’s data. The fact is, payroll costs, especially at the major banks, are outrageous and their FTE headcounts made excessive by mitigating the pandemic and so much else in recent years.
In April 2023, total wages and salaries paid fell by 1.7 per cent or A$1.6 billion from March 2023.
Total wages and salaries paid by employers was $91.4 billion in April 2023, the ABS said.