Trends in Federal Enterprise Bargaining

Trends in Federal Enterprise Bargaining (Trends report) is a quarterly report containing data about the number of enterprise agreements made in the federal workplace relations system. It also contains data about the number of employees covered and the level of wage increases included in collective agreements.

On this page:

The data in the report is obtained from our Workplace Agreements Database. The database contains information about every federal collective agreement made since formal enterprise bargaining in federal workplace relations began in 1991.

Technical notes are included at the end of each Trends report to support its interpretation.

Latest release

The most recent Trends report is the March quarter 2026 report, which was published on 29 June 2026.

Key statistics

  • There are currently 11,333 active agreements covering over 2.6 million employees, with an average annualised wage increase of 4.0%.
  • 723 new agreements were approved during the March quarter 2026, covering approximately 118,000 employees, with an average annualised wage increase of 4.0%.
    • Newly approved private sector agreements have average annualised wage increases of 4.1%.
    • Newly approved public sector agreements have average annualised wage increases of 3.5%.

Changes since the last publication

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations is increasing the amount of data we publish about federal enterprise bargaining, by expanding the products included in our quarterly data release. New products include:

  • Bite Sized Bargaining – exploring changes over time to the frequency and coverage of specific conditions within federal enterprise agreements.
  • Trends Detailed Tables – more detailed breakdown of the quarterly data than the summary data published in the Trends report.

Data downloads

Trends Detailed tables

The following tables include federal enterprise bargaining data on a rolling 11-year basis, as well as copies of all data presented within the Trends report. An overview of the purpose and design of the tables, and a data dictionary, are included within.

This data release series commenced in June 2026. We encourage users to share their ideas for improving the data release via EBTrends@dewr.gov.au, so we can continue to improve its functionality over time.

Historical wage increase data, by industry

The following table contains all wage increase data for agreements made from 1991 onwards, disaggregated by industry (ANZSIC 2006).

Bite-Sized Bargaining

Each quarter we analyse trends over time for one condition of the over 200 available within the Workplace Agreements Database and publish the results.

Latest release

Join our mailing list

To keep up to date with the latest news and upcoming publications, join the workplace agreements data mailing list. To register, email EBTrends@dewr.gov.au.

Previous report releases

For copies of older trends reports contact EBTrends@dewr.gov.au.

Supplementary paper archive

Supplementary papers have been published to provide detailed analysis of specific subjects that are also useful to understand the context of data in the Trends reports.