Build a real wage tracker for newsrooms
Track real wages by joining ABS Wage Price Index with ABS Consumer Price Index in one JSON workflow. ausdata.io exposes both series and refreshes within hours of each quarterly release, so you can chart real wage growth before the morning news cycle.
The problem
Real wages are a derived series, not a published one. You have to fetch WPI, fetch CPI, align the quarters, and subtract. Doing it by hand in Excel each quarter is fine for one chart, painful for an ongoing tracker.
The fix
Two GETs, one subtraction. WPI quarterly and CPI quarterly both arrive within days of the release. Bind the chart to ausdata.io, ship the chart, and the chart updates itself the next time the data does.
Endpoints used
Code
# Latest WPI
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
"https://api.ausdata.io/v1/data/abs/WPI?sector=Private&limit=8"
# Latest CPI
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
"https://api.ausdata.io/v1/cost-of-living"Steps
- 1
Fetch both series
Pull the last 8 quarters of WPI and the matching CPI. Both endpoints return ISO quarter labels for easy joining.
- 2
Subtract CPI from WPI
Real wage growth equals wage growth minus headline CPI for the same quarter.
- 3
Chart it
Datawrapper, Flourish, Observable. ausdata.io is the data layer, the chart layer is your call.
- 4
Republish on release
Subscribe to Pulse webhooks. When ABS publishes the next CPI or WPI, the webhook fires and you refresh the chart.
Other use cases
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