What 14 Years of Tax Returns Say About Australian Pay

Most salary articles are built on a survey of a few thousand people, or on whatever employers chose to put in a job ad. There is a better source sitting in public, and almost nobody uses it.

Every year the Australian Taxation Office publishes Taxation Statistics, including a table of salary and wage income by reported occupation and income year back to 2010-11. This is administrative tax-return data rather than an opt-in salary survey. It covers records with a usable occupation and salary or wage value, not literally every filer.

We parsed the whole thing to build the Australian Salary Search. Here is what fourteen years of it shows.

The headline: about 3.0% a year

For a declared cohort of 94 occupation groups with a complete fourteen-year series and at least 35,000 people reporting the group in 2023-24, the unweighted average of group averages rose from about $51,600 in 2010-11 to $76,200 in 2023-24. That is around 3.0% a year over thirteen years.

It is not a wage index, and it is not take-home pay. It is gross assessable salary or wage income reported through the tax system. More on what that does and does not prove below.

Care work was among the fastest-growing groups

Two care-work groups stand out among the faster-growing large occupations:

• Aged or disabled carers: $28,089 to $49,533, about 4.5% a year, with about 221,000 people reporting the occupation in the latest table.
• Child carers: $24,755 to $42,643, about 4.3% a year, across about 209,000 people reporting the occupation in the latest table.

Education aides also rose about 4.0%. Table 14B cannot say how much of these rises came from pay rates, hours worked or a changing workforce mix, so the series should not be used to assign a cause.

The growth rate is the good news. The level is not: a child carer’s average salary income in 2023-24 was still under $43,000. Fastest-growing and lowest-paid are not contradictory here: the first is partly a consequence of the second.

Several well-paid professions barely moved

At the other end, some of the slowest growth is in some of the best-paid work:

• Finance managers: $116,526 to $133,548, about 1.1% a year in nominal salary income.
• Contract, program and project administrators: $63,319 to $78,303, about 1.6% a year, across 300,000 people.
• General medical practitioners: $108,360 to $138,539, about 1.9% a year.

The series cannot distinguish changes in pay rates from changes in hours or workforce composition. For example, adding more junior people can pull down an occupation average even if no individual’s pay falls.

Why a near doubling is not proof of a pay rise

The single most instructive line in the whole dataset is bank tellers, officers and employees: $56,255 to $99,950, about 4.5% a year. Nearly doubled.

That does not establish a 78% rise in anyone's pay rate. The code combines different roles, and Table 14B cannot separate hourly rates, hours worked and workforce composition. Structural changes may affect the result, but this table alone cannot prove which change caused it.

This is the single most important caveat on any figure in this article. An average salary for an occupation moves for three reasons: pay rates change, hours change, and who is in the occupation changes. Only the first is a pay rise.

2020 was not the year you would expect

In the declared 94-group cohort, 74 recorded a higher average salary income in 2019-20 than in 2018-19.

The table does not identify why. A salary-income average can move when hours, workforce composition or the population with a non-zero salary value changes; it does not follow a fixed panel of the same workers from one year to the next.

A broader rise came later: 59 of those 94 groups grew more than 5% in 2022-23.

Where trades and tech landed

The occupations people ask about most, over the full fourteen years:

• Software and applications programmers: $79,596 to $129,376, 3.8% a year.
• Registered nurses: $50,216 to $79,242, 3.6% a year.
• Carpenters and joiners: $49,456 to $78,723, 3.6% a year.
• Accountants: $75,268 to $115,469, 3.3% a year.
• Electricians: $74,644 to $111,934, 3.2% a year.
• Truck drivers: $54,797 to $82,516, 3.2% a year.

The spread between the fastest and slowest of these is smaller than most people expect. The dramatic differences are at the edges of the labour market, not in its middle.

How to read any of this honestly

Four things are worth holding onto:

• These are averages, not medians. A handful of very high earners lifts an occupation’s average above what a typical person in it makes. The Australian Salary Search uses medians for exactly that reason; the fourteen-year series is only published as an average.
• The population is broad, but not every filer. Records with a usable occupation and salary or wage value can include part-year and part-time workers. Blank or unmatched occupations are outside an occupation-level series.
• Composition can move the number. The bank teller line shows why a large change in an average should not automatically be called a pay rise.
• The data runs about two years behind. 2023-24 is the most recent income year published.

Look up your own occupation

Every occupation in this article is in the Australian Salary Search, with a modelled pay guide, a state-by-state breakdown and its fourteen-year series. Type a job title, and the trend chart appears under the result.

Once you have a figure, the Pay Calculator will tell you what it is worth after tax, and the Income Percentile Calculator will tell you where it sits among all Australian taxpayers.

Source: ATO Taxation Statistics 2023-24, Individuals Table 14B, used under CC BY 2.5 AU. Growth rates are compound annual rates across the full series. Aggregate cohort claims use complete series for groups reported by at least 35,000 people in 2023-24; group averages are averaged without population weighting. Full method on the methodology page.