WOOL AND WAGES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1931, Page 7

WOOL AND WAGES

AUSTRALIA'S INCOME

SMASHING FALL

Official statistics furnish striking testfc j mony o£ the gap that has appeared reI eently between our national income and expenditure, says the Sydney "Sun." The disparity between the total amount received for wool and wheat—the mainsprings of our wealth—and what was received in the boom years, forces the conclusion that the money is no longer available to pay the high wages which owed their origin to those boom conditions. How industry, with all the goodwill in the world, cannot possibly pay to -the same number of men the same wages as it did in the days of prosperity, is shown by compilations of the Official 1930 Year Book of Australia, covering the trend of labour rates and wealth production in the last half-dozen year?. In 1925 the average wage of the Australian adult male worker was £4 16s 9d a week, or £251 11s a year. The year following saw a sharp increase, and there then ensued a steady rise until, in the third quarter of 1929, the average'wage had reached £5 ]s 5d a week, or £263 13s 8d a year. From that high mark, coinciding more or less with the begin* ning of the depression, there was a very slight decline at the end of the year .taj £5 Is 2d a week, or £203 0s 6d a year. BUILDERS BEST. In the disbursement of wages, employees of secondary industries fared best, tha building trade paying an average of £5 13s a week, engineering £5 3s 6d, and food manufacture £5 Os lOd. To agricultural workers, however, the averaga payment was £4 15s Gd a week. From a consideration of the higher wage trend, it is natural to turn to the' question of -wool values, for, on the pastoral, more than any other industry, depends the nation's prosperity. . Actually, in' the last six.years, the export of wool has averaged 42.2 per cent, of the value of the total shipments of merchandise from Australia. Until recently the total value of tha wool output has ranged between £70,000,----000 and £80,000,000 a year, going as higli as £81,430,000 in the record season, 1924----25. In 1927-28 it was £75,364,000, and in 1028-29, £70,833,000. Export values of wool bear similar tri? Bute to the rising tide of wealth. la ]927-28 it was worth £06,097,118 to Australia, able then to pay an average of just over £5 a week to the adult worker, but greasy wool was then averaging the extravagant price of 20.49 d a Ib. Tha next year saw a return to 17.58 d a lb, and then came the sharp break in 1929-30, ■when the average price dropped to 11.31 a.lb. \ - DOWN BY HALF. Wool exports worth £61,615,245 in 1928----29 had helped in considerable measure to pay an average wage of £5 Is 4d a week, l-'or 1929-30, however, wool, at 11.3d a lb, was.worth altogether only £42,863,000, little more than half the total of 1924-25, and now the average price at recent sales has slumped to a, fraction over 8d a Ibis 8d in 1927-28, 8d in 1930-31. The consequences of this last heavy decline, emphasising still further the impossibility of industry being able to payout the same sum in wages as it did in other years, have yet to be estimated. 1 Wheat, another generous contributor t» Australia's wealth, shows a similar movement. The 1928-29 crop was worth £38,----303,014 ;to the Commonwealth, but - the export value per bushel was then 4s lOd. It has since dropped by approximately 50 per cent. **, The money for the wages is not there.