Australia’s cost-of-living story is often told as a single crisis affecting everyone equally. The data tell a sharper story: the households hit hardest in 2022–23 — working families with mortgages — are now recording the smallest cost rises of any group. That reversal is counterintuitive, timely, and easy to miss in headline CPI figures. What has not reversed is the cumulative damage: even as growth eases, the gap between wages and living costs remains.
Chart 1 — Wages vs prices
Figure 1. WPI and CPI rebased to an index scale. WPI (all sectors, seasonally adjusted) is set to 100 at Mar 2020. CPI (all groups) is chained to the WPI level at Jun 2024 — the first quarter-end month available in the provided monthly CPI file — so both series share a common scale from that point. The dashed line marks where CPI enters the chart. Source: ABS Wage Price Index and Consumer Price Index, Mar quarter 2026 / Apr 2026.
Chart 2 — Real wages are only just recovering
Figure 2. Real wage growth approximated as annual WPI % change minus annual CPI % change (quarter-end CPI). The provided CPI file covers Apr 2024–Apr 2026, so this chart begins Jun 2024; Figure 3 shows how living costs diverged across household types through 2022–23. Source: ABS WPI and CPI, Mar quarter 2026 / Apr 2026.
Chart 3 — Not everyone felt the same squeeze
Figure 3. Annual percentage change in Selected Living Cost Indexes by household type. Use the dropdown to highlight one household type; click legend items to toggle series. Source: ABS Selected Living Cost Indexes, Mar quarter 2026.
Chart 4 — The reversal across household types
Figure 4. Dumbbell comparison of annual living-cost change at the Jun 2023 peak versus Mar 2026. Employee households recorded the largest decline (9.7% to 2.6%) — moving from the highest to the lowest annual rise of any household type. Source: ABS Selected Living Cost Indexes, Mar quarter 2026.
Chart 5 — Where we actually stand
Figure 5. Living cost indexes by household type rebased to 100 at Mar 2020, with WPI overlaid for reference. Use the dropdown to highlight one series. Source: ABS Selected Living Cost Indexes and WPI, Mar quarter 2026.
References
Anthropic. (2026). Claude [Large language model]. https://claude.ai
Anysphere. (2026). Cursor [AI coding assistant]. https://cursor.com
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2026). Consumer Price Index, Australia [Time series spreadsheet, April 2026]. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/consumer-price-index-australia/latest-release
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2026). Selected Living Cost Indexes, Australia [Time series spreadsheet, March quarter 2026]. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/selected-living-cost-indexes-australia/latest-release
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2026). Wage Price Index, Australia [Time series spreadsheet, March quarter 2026]. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/wage-price-index-australia/latest-release
Sievert, C., & Parmer, C. (2023). plotly: Interactive web-based charts for R. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=plotly
Wickham, H., Chang, W., Henry, L., Pedersen, T. L., Takahashi, K., Wilke, C., Woo, K., Yutani, H., & Dunnington, D. (2023). ggplot2: Create elegant data visualisations using the grammar of graphics. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggplot2
Acknowledgements
I used Cursor (Anysphere, 2026), an AI coding assistant powered by Claude (Anthropic, 2026), to assist with structuring the R code, parsing the ABS time-series spreadsheets, and debugging the RMarkdown document. All data values were independently verified against the source ABS spreadsheets, and the story concept, narrative, analytical decisions, chart design, and interpretation are my own work.