Wages, salaries rose 15 p.c.

Press, 10 March 1987, Page 25

Wages, salaries rose 15 p.c.

PA Wellington Wage and salary rates in all sectors increased 15 per cent on average for the year ending in the December, 1986, quarter, says the acting Government Statistician, Mr Ron Welply. The increase was shown by the prevailing weekly wage rates index, which measures changes in the ordinary-time wage and salary rates actually paid to full-time adult employees. For each of the Government and private and local authority combined sectors, payments from the 1985-86 wage round contribute the main portion of the increases shown by each index series for the period concerned, he said. For the Government sector, the increase of 16.2 per cent for the year ending in the December, 1986, quarter included almost all final payouts for the 1985-86 wage round. There has been no settle-

ment, and resulting payout, of wage rate increases for Government employees in the present 1986-87 round.

The private and local authorities sectors combined increase of 14.1 per cent over the same period includes early payouts of wage rate increases from the 1986-87 wage round. The March, 1987, and subsequent quarters’ indexes will show more clearly the impact of the present round on wage rates being paid. The impact on wage and salary earners of the introduction of the goods and services tax, Family Support and the related income tax changes is not measured by the Prevailing Weekly Wage Rates Index, he said. The effects of the October, , 1986, tax-benefit "package” combined with other income and price changes will be shown by the department’s Real Disposable Income Indexes later this month.