Purchasing power · Official ABS CPI

Did your pay rise
beat inflation?

Compare gross salaries on the same annual basis and with comparable working hours. Choose the latest monthly data or long-run quarterly history, for Australia or any capital city. This calculates CPI-adjusted purchasing power, not tax, benefits or your household’s exact living costs.

Current source release: August 2026, published 30 September 2026. Monthly observations run through August 2026; quarterly observations through June quarter 2026. The source includes all available index history, not selected example dates.

All groups monthly CPI · Weighted average of eight capital cities. Available: April 2024 to August 2026. Changing the CPI series clears the calculation; monthly and quarterly periods are never combined.

How the calculation works

Inflation factor = end CPI index ÷ start CPI index. Nominal pay change = (current salary ÷ earlier salary − 1) × 100. Real pay change = (current salary ÷ earlier salary ÷ inflation factor − 1) × 100. Salary needed = earlier salary × inflation factor. Values are rounded only for display.

CPI describes an average basket, not every household’s experience. The Australia series is a weighted average of eight capital cities, not a separate rural cost index. No category-weight estimate is included. Monthly and quarterly series remain separate; no dates are extrapolated. Indexes in the current release use September 2025 = 100.

ABS Consumer Price Index, August 2026 · Published 30 September 2026 · Tables 1 and 17 · CC BY 4.0