Zero Variance

Xero data reveals wage pressures easing for Australian small businesses

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Melbourne —23 February, 2023 — Xero, the global small business platform, today released its latest data on the health of Australia’s small business economy from the Xero Small Business Index. Based on aggregated and anonymised transactions from hundreds of thousands of small businesses, the Index is part of the Xero Small Business Insights program.

The Australian Small Business Index was 93 points in January 2023. This is down 26 points since November, driven by a slowdown across all four sub-metrics. Sales grew 7.2 percent year-on-year (y/y), the same result as December, but down from 11.1 percent y/y in November. Jobs growth slowed to just 1.6 percent y/y, down from 2.8 percent y/y in December. The time to be paid metric rose 0.6 days to 23.8 days, which is the longest time since September 2020. Wages rose just 2.9 percent y/y in January, down from a peak of 4.7 percent y/y in September 2022 and just below the long-run average for this series (+3.0% y/y).

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