Start Saving ‘Cause Ya Groceries Went Up By Almost Triple What Minimum Wage Did For 2020

By Kassia Byrnes March 02, 2020

I don’t think anyone can deny Australia is an exxy place to live these days – particularly if, like me, you’re sadly addicted to living in Sydney and therefore need rich person wages to ever leave the house (I don’t leave the house much).

But how much can minimum wage actually do for us? A new report by Picodi can tell us exactly that.

In good news, the minimum wage is up 2.1% from just last year, which means we’re at $2,813 net monthly wage for a full-time employee. In not so good news, the cost of basic food products – things like bread, milk and beef – has increased by 6.24% which is a total of $196.17 a month per person.

To break that down for you, Picodi has outlined what they count as a basic monthly grocery shop and listed the price of those items:

  • 10 litres of milk – $15.40
  • 10 loaves of bread – $26.90
  • 1.5 kg of rice – $3.95
  • 20 eggs – $7.13
  • 1 kg cheese – $9.61
  • 6 kg poultry and beef – $80.61
  • 6 kg fruits – $23.26
  • 8 kg vegetables – $29.31

This still means that your shopping basket only takes up 7% of a minimum wage net monthly pay, but considering the exact same list this time last year took up 6.7% of the minimum wage, it’s a little concerning price increases are higher than wage increases. In fact, at number 43 out of all 54 countries included, we had one of the lowest increases.

Although we’re still ranked first out of all those same countries in terms of the portion of our minimum wage that goes towards groceries – so I guess that’s pretty good? Then again, I would say that my grocery shop is quite basic and I think I’d still be slightly over that very small monthly amount calculated by Picodi.

Let’s just say my feelings on this are conflicted. More money please.

Source: https://www.pedestrian.tv/careers/basic-food-shop-increase-triple-minimum-wage-increase/