Trapped coal miners leave after they were rescued at the Raspotocje coal mine in Zenica September 5, 2014. Five Bosnian miners were confirmed dead on Friday, a day after an earthquake triggered a collapse at the mine, as emergency teams helped 29 others t
Trapped coal miners leave after they were rescued at the Raspotocje coal mine in Zenica September 5, 2014. Reuters/Dado Ruvic

Wages in Australia have risen in the third quarter of 2014. However, it was the country's lowest growth ever in 15 years.

Data released on Wednesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed wages jumped 0.6 percent in the third quarter. But it only actually just matched the gains recorded in the previous quarter. Annual Australian wage growth, meantime, is just stuck at 2.6 percent, the country's slowest pace in two decades.

The dismal improvement is indicative of the country's fading resource-related construction activity. Australia has largely survived in the previous years because of mining activities. For the quarter ending September 2014, miners received just a measly 0.2 percent increase in their pay cheques, which was also described as the "smallest quarterly growth ever recorded for this industry." Wage rises in this over the last year was 2.5 percent. Compared in the year ending September 2012, the growth in miners' wages has shrunk from a whopping 5.2 percent before to just 2.5 percent now.

The same data from ABS showed seasonally adjusted wage growth in the September quarter in the private sector was 0.6 percent. Public sector wages, meantime, jumped 0.5 percent in the same period.

Of all of Australia's industries, it was the accommodation and food services industry that posted the largest quarterly rise at 1.9 percent. But with Australia's consumer prices also growing by 2.3 percent in the same period in September, real wages, it seemed, didn't really improve at all over the year.