Australia's wealthiest suburbs are distancing themselves from poor neighbours, who have grown twice as fast as their income since 2010.
The average income growth rate in the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne has been only 15% since 2010-barely keeping pace with the cost of living-while the average income growth rate in the affluent suburbs of Sydney's North Bank, such as Manly, has been as high as 30%, according to new data. Twice the level of inflation.
Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday are expected to trigger political debate in Canberra as Labour and the Unionparty debate on upcoming elections over how to raise wage growth rates and combat cost-of-living pressures.
In Melbourne, median incomes in cities such as Yarra,Bayside and Stonnington did not exceed 60, 000 yuan, and wages rose between 18 percent and 21 percent between 2010 and 2016.
By contrast, income for the city's 67000 working residents, mainly international students and temporary workers, grew by just 8 percent.
The actual pay cut means that in 2016, workers with a median income of 47,999 yuan were actually 3360 yuan less than they were in 2010.
In Sydney, Leichhardt residents had the highest median income of 75500 yuan, followed by North Sydney,Chatswood,Manly and Ku-ringai workers. Everyone's income growth rate is far higher than inflation, close to 20%.
The residents of Merrylands,Fairfield and Auburn are less fortunate. In the suburbs of Western Rim, 56 percent of residents are born overseas, but their median income is 30,000 yuan less than their neighbors living in coastal suburbs.
And most people get pay rises that barely keep pace with inflation. Auburn residents have even been cut, earning 2% less than they should have in 2016, or $865.
ABS data for the first time compared different occupations in different regions.
The average annual income of a male manager living in Manly increased from 104,000 in 2010 to 126,831 in 2016, an increase of 22%. Male managers in Campbelltown or Gippsland receive only a 7% salary increase.
In 123 suburbs, high-income men-teachers, doctors and lawyers-are listed before female professionals appear on the list. These high-income women live in the North District of Sydney with a median annual income of $80671.
They earned the same income as male professionals living in St Mary, a suburb of Sydney, but received a double raise between 2010 and 2016.
The owner and cashier in Port Phillip, Victoria, earn twice as much as their Melton counterparts. Similarly, Penrith's machine operators earn twice as much as their Stonnington counterparts.
Over the past six years, salaries for elderly care and social work community service workers in Marrickville,Sydenham and Petersham, in Melbourne's inner west, have fallen. The income of 30, 000 community service workers at Maribyrnong in the northwest has not improved much, with a median annual income of just 32,999 yuan, a rise of 4 percent below inflation over the past five years.
Jarvis (Bjorn Jarvis), head of labor statistics at the ABS, said the median annual income for Australians in 2015-16 was 47692 yuan, an increase of 1.8 percent over the previous year.
"these data provide a comprehensive set of income indicators to better understand the distribution of income across the country and how it changes." He said。
The government is determined this week to pass a congressional vote on a $144 billion tax cut to provide tax cuts to workers in low-wage regions starting July 1.
But Labour said it would block the tax cuts and denounce the government for cutting taxes by 65 billion yuan for large businesses at the expense of ordinary workers.