tensions. we hope for the best here, but we also need to be prepared for further setbacks in what remains a highly uncertain world. the rba will be releasing a full set of updated economic forecasts on friday. today, i can provide the key numbers. in preparing these forecasts we have assumed a rollout of the vaccines in australia in line with current government guidance and that international travel remains highly restricted for the rest of this year. our central scenario is for the upswing in the australian economy to continue, with above - trend growth over the next couple of years ( graph 6 ). gdp is expected to increase by 3½ per cent over both this year and 2022. given the recovery we have seen so far, we are expecting the level of gdp to return to its end - 2019 level by the middle of this year, which is 6 to 12 months earlier than we previously expected. graph 6 notwithstanding this recovery, we are not expecting the level of gdp to return to its previous trend over our forecast period. this is largely because of lower population growth. when we prepared the forecasts a year ago, we were expecting the population to grow by 1. 6 per cent per year over 2020 and 2021. the actual outcome is likely to be around 0. 2 per cent in 2021, the lowest since world war i ( graph 7 ). this slower population growth has a direct effect on the size of our economy and means that we will not get back to the previous trend any time soon. in per capita terms, we expect more, but not all, of the lost ground to be made up. graph 7 in the labour market, we are expecting the rate of unemployment to continue to decline. in the central scenario, it is expected to reach 6 per cent by the end of this year and around 5¼ per cent by mid 2023 ( graph 8 ). job vacancies, job ads and business hiring intentions are at 3 / 7 bis central bankers'speeches high levels, which suggests continuing solid employment growth over the next few months. beyond that, some slowing in employment growth is expected when the jobkeeper program comes to an end in march. graph 8 given this outlook, wages growth and inflation are forecast to remain subdued. in the central scenario, wages growth is forecast to pick up from its current low rate, but to do so only very gradually and still be below 2 per cent at the end of next year. consistent with this, and the ongoing spare capacity

in the public interest and, if so, to ensure they go ahead. industry - level decision making may be only part of the answer. along with these questions of governance, the critical decisions of the review are likely to relate to the architecture of the payments system. by that i mean in particular the question of whether there is a place for additional centralised architecture in the australian payments system. a possible argument for that proposition is that centralised systems may be better able to innovate than bilateral systems. they may also be structurally more efficient when a network has a large number of participants, and better suited to providing open access to new players. the possible need for a centralised architecture is also relevant to the question of faster ( or real - time ) payments at the retail level. the consultation process has brought out a range of views on this subject. some argued that the existing architecture provided a sufficient level of centralisation, or pointed to the potential cost of moving existing systems onto a hub. others focused on the potential for some form of hub to provide real - time retail transfers and went as far as proposing a governance framework for such a system. we should be in a position to announce some conclusion on that in the near future, along with the other matters i ’ ve outlined today. let me turn briefly to the third and fourth areas of current policy work. issue number three is the regulatory framework for the eftpos system. one of the very significant developments in recent times has been the establishment of epal as a national scheme for eftpos payments. the reserve bank has welcomed that development because we see it as strengthening competition among card payment schemes in the domestic market. as a consequence of the establishment of epal, the eftpos system now works largely as a multilateral network. but much of the existing framework – the access regime and interchange fee standards – was designed in reference to the earlier bilaterally - based system. as a result, the relevance and applicability of the existing framework will need to be reviewed. one change that has already been made was the decision in november 2009 to bring multilateral eftpos fees under the same interchange fee standard as applies to scheme debit cards. but further changes to all elements of the regulatory framework for the eftpos system will need to be considered. some of the reasons for that are purely technical, because the regulations as they stand do not reflect the system ’ s current structure. but there are also