Wages will be in the spotlight this week with the release of information about wage growth — or more pointedly the lack of it.

The wage price index is again expected to show anaemic increases when it is released on Wednesday.

The market consensus is that wages grew at 0.6 per cent in the last quarter and 2.3 per cent over the year, which puts it at record lows around the pace of the brutal recession of the early 1990s.

Back when wage growth was last this level GDP was shrinking, employment fell by than 3 per cent and unemployment was in double digits.

But last week saw extraordinary news that almost 60,000 jobs were created in October and unemployment dipped to 5.9 per cent.

This would normally indicate the labour market was getting tighter and, in theory, wages should be rising.

UBS economist Scott Haslem highlighted the paradox in a note to clients pointing out it was part of the adjustment being made to the terms of trade collapse ushered in by the sudden reversal of fortunes in the resources sector.

"The economy was adjusting via a lower Australian dollar and interest rates and the labour market was adjusting via weaker wages rather than jobs," Mr Haslem said.

"Employment growth has doubled in recent months to a five-year high of 2.7 per cent year-on-year in October, in contrast to nominal wages growth dropping below 2.5 per cent year-on-year in 2015, the weakest since the early 1990s recession."

Unsurprisingly, mining has the weakest wage growth, down 2.7 per cent.

However non-mining wages also dropped to 2.5 per cent, less than half the prior trend, and the slowest since the early 1990s.

In part, it is due to a shift in the composition of jobs being created.

Mining wages are generally two to three times higher than other industries but the new jobs being created are in areas with far lower average pay.

As Mr Haslem pointed out, household services — which have been the key driver of jobs for a number of years — have average weekly earnings about one-third the level of mining.

"That is, it takes three jobs in household services to replace one job lost in mining," Mr Haslem said.

So will wages growth pick up? Probably, but not any time soon.

As Mr Haslem said, the faster pace of jobs growth means that wages growth should also start to tick up over time, albeit from a record low.

Commodities under pressure

The other big theme of the week is likely to be the negative sentiment the continuing slump in commodity prices is having on the markets, particularly oil and copper.

The copper price has hit a six-year low and in oil — the US reference point — West Texas Intermediate crude looks like tumbling back through the $US40 a barrel level.

Brent crude, at $US45 a barrel, is back to where it was in 2009.

Sentiment in the oil market is unlikely to be helped by a report from the International Energy Agency released at the weekend, that the world is awash with oil.

Stockpiles of oil now stand at a record 3 billion barrels.

While demand has risen to a five-year high of nearly 2 million barrels a day, that has been outpaced by vigorous production from OPEC and resilient non-OPEC supply — with Russian output at a post-Soviet record and likely to remain robust in 2016.

In the copper market, three-month futures contacts have dropped 10 per cent in value in the past month.

The big miner Glencore is feeling the pinch and recently said it would cut production roughly equivalent to 2.5 per cent of global output.

ANZ commodity strategist Daniel Hynes said while the closures announced so far were unlikely to have a short-term impact, they would help to rebalance the market in 2016/17.

"In the absence of further cutbacks in the immediate future, spot prices are likely to see further downward pressure," Mr Hynes said.

Compounding this is the continuing weak economic news out of China with industrial production and fixed asset investment — a measure of infrastructure and property spending — still slowing.

The stronger US dollar, supported by the increased likelihood of the Fed finally raising rates in December, is also putting considerable pressure on commodity spot prices.

All up, it looks like being not only another tough week for commodities but also the mining and energy companies and their shareholders.

Insight into central bank thinking

This week will also see more information released from central banks.

The US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and our own Reserve Bank will all publish minutes of their most recent meetings.

On top of that, the Bank of Japan also meets on Thursday but with rates at zero there is little room to move.

GDP figures released on Monday are likely to show that Japan has once again slipped into recession... a bit more money printing anyone?

The Fed is likely to be the most interesting read on Friday, given a December rate rise — or "liftoff" — is very much back in the frame.

Current betting has a rate rise this year around 66 per cent.

The Fed has been, as they say, "hawkish" about rates lately, seemingly softening the market for a rise sooner rather than later.

Indeed the Fed's last communique included shifting the language from "maintaining the target range" for rates to whether or not a hike is appropriate "at its next meeting".

The market will now be looking for hints about the pace of rate rises rather than the now passé discussion of when they will kick in.

The ECB is heading the other direction, with president Mario Draghi having another "whatever it takes" moment.

At least that is the way the market saw it and will be looking for guidance on another round of quantitative easing when the minutes are published on Thursday.

The RBA minutes may already be somewhat dated given the surge in jobs and decline in unemployment reported last week.

Since the Cup Day meeting a surprising amount has happened on the local monetary front.

The RBA's Statement on Monetary Policy revised down growth and inflation forecasts, but reinforced the idea that a rate cut needed more evidence of weaker economic activity.

No sooner had the ink dried on that document than employment took off, taking the Australian dollar up with it.

Nonetheless, the minutes should provide a snapshot about how the board assessed various risks at the time.