Are Salaries Higher In Australia or New Zealand?

in this video I'll be comparing the average wages in both New Zealand and Australia it is said that wages are higher in Australia so in this video I'll be using official government data to confirm whether this is in fact true make sure to stick around as the results are surprising the New Zealand media have long praised Australia as a better option for kiwis higher wages a low cost of living and warmer weather are often touted as being bitter across the ditch and of course many kiwis have made the hop across the ditch already in search of a bit life for them and their families stats in said the New Zealand government's data collection agency reported that from 2004 to 2013 New Zealand had an average annual net migration loss to Australia of 3,000 citizens in 2023 this Rose 7-fold to over 21,000 and it's not surprising many people I went to school with have since moved to Australia and the UK especially so after the pandemic when we consider the rising cost of living house prices and a lack of career opportunities among a myriad of other issues many kiwis have migrated in search for a better Fortune abroad many migrants abroad have touted Australia's better wages in this video I wanted to put it to the test in January the Australian Bureau of Statistics released their employee and earnings data for 2023 in New Zealand our state's Department released similar data also in 2023 with relatively recent data from both countries this should be a fair comparison however just comparing the government fig figures though would be incomplete I'll also be looking to adjust these figures for income tax and on top of that again adjusting for the difference in exchange rate at the time this video was made kiwi got just 91.7 Australian cents on the Kiwi dollar so we'll make these adjustments to compare wages on an equal footing first up we have the Australian income data I got it from the Australian Bureau of Statistics website it was also shared on the mini of mini website looking at the average Australian wage I'll include links to both sites down below in the video description so here's the data here they provide a bit of a pack looking at the incomes of Australians broken down by age occupation industry employer size and a raft of other measures we're interested in the second table breaking the figures down by age about halfway down we get the average weekly total cash earnings for all full-time employees in Australia I've already captured these figures in Google Sheets for our analysis but now let's jump into the New Zealand figures I got these from stats NZ they have a portal called NZ dostat online which allows you to essentially run a pivot table over their data I was able to narrow down the data to show the average weekly earnings and the number of people in each age group here you can see I've extracted the data already into Google Sheets so now we have all the data that we need to do this analysis as you can see the data is lob sided with the age groups being different we'll need to adjust the New Zealand figures to fit into the Australian groupings we can simply use the number of full-time workers in each group to wait the salaries once that's done we are left with this table at a glance we can already see the difference between these two countries while the under 20s are 8% better off in New Zealand at every other age group the difference grows to about 20% in the favor of Australia in Australia as well as New Zealand average incomes are highest in the 45 to 54 age group this isn't surprising as by this age many will have become managers or have spent decades honing their craft and relationships in their sector annualizing these figures the average 45 to 50 4y- old in Australia earns $116,000 in New Zealand this figure is a much lower 98,000 on average but this is just the start as we haven't yet considered the tax rates and difference in exchange rate so stay tuned for that now we must adjust these income levels for the tax rates in both countries here you can see both Australia and New Zealand's tax rates in New Zealand rates start at 10.5% and top out at 39% for income above 180,000 a year over in Australia just last month the a announced they were dropping their tax rates in the 2024 and 25 tax year the 19% and 32.5% rates are dropping to 16 and 30% respectively they're also playing around with the tax thresholds which have been adjusted for incomes above 120,000 and 180,000 this of course will push up the relative incomes in Australia as their citizens will hold on to more of their earnings applying these tax rates to our incomes here's what we get as you can see by the widening gap between wages Australia Ians have a lower tax burden on income than kiwis let's take a second to consider their GST rate is a lower 10% as well so kiwis are getting taxed at a higher rate on income and spending both ends of the stick the difference for under 20s is just 2% in favor of New Zealand but at the higher incomes this goes as high as 23% in favor of Australia but of course we aren't done yet the Australian dollar is worth about 9% more than the New Zealand dollar this Gap is about to widen yet again as mentioned earlier the exchange rate at the time of making this video was 91.7 to the New Zealand dollar once we apply the exchange rate to the Australian wages we can see the final figure comparing wages between the two countries under 20s after considering both the tax and exchange rates are 6% better off in Australia from an income perspective for 21 to 34 year olds this grows to a whopping 30% 35 to 44 year olds Peak at 34% better off in Australia those aged 44 to 5 4 are 31% richer in Australia and finally those 55 plus are 32% better off over the ditch adding fuel to the fire let's also consider that Australian employers at 11% of super on top of these wages while in New Zealand we get a poultry 3% clearly with the best available data from both countries governments Australia has more money to offer kiwis of all age groups this is of course an average and could vary widely by state occupation or industry jumping back into our Australian data table 10 shows us the breakdown by state act the nation's capital pays the highest average weekly wage for every age bracket above 35 in the 21 to 34 age group Western Australia shines presumably from younger workers heading over for the higher mining wages and the other 20s are better placed in Northern Territory jumping over into table five it shows a breakdown by occupation fortunately New Zealand reports data with the same occupation groupings in Australia managers make 2700 a week on average while in New Zealand this drops to a just under 2,000 in a weaker currency working professionals make $1,900 on average in Australia while in New Zealand is just ,700 and for tradies many of which have moved to Australia from New Zealand the difference is 1,700 there and 1300 here it's no surprise why so many kiwis are moving over higher super higher wages lower income tax and a lower consumption tax and finally let's take a look at the industries once again New Zealand reports on the same categories it goes without saying that mining jobs in Australia pay extremely well the average worker makes over $150,000 a year or $33,000 a week in Australia in New Zealand this drops to just $1,800 a week roughly 40% lower utility providers are another industry that pays substantially more in Australia a whopping $2400 a week on average versus $1,800 in New Zealand Industries on the other side of the spectr that pay higher in New Zealand are Finance real estate and arts and Recreation sectors Australia pays more in every other industry however if you enjoyed this comparison I made a video in the past comparing the cost of living in both New Zealand and Australia so make sure to check that out I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please make sure to subscribe down below to see more content just like it if you have any other ideas for a comparison between the two countries or if anything surprised you in the video please let me know Down Below in the comments thanks for watching and I look forward to catching you on the next one cheers

Channel: Brent Coleman

Views: 24,574

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Id: m8Jztks9iIQ

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024