Mr Barr said the ACT economy was already starting to see the effect of pent up consumer demand, with a fresh multibillion-dollar savings pool across households and businesses ready to be spent in Canberra.

"The other thing that is very clear is the number of job advertisements is rising rapidly. There are going to be skill shortages in certain industry sectors. Employers are going to have to pay more for certain skills. They're also going to have to pay to attract staff, to retain staff," Mr Barr said.

"So from an employee perspective, you've lived through a decade of relatively low wage growth. There's been some deliberate policy settings at the federal level to suppress wage growth. Well the economy is about to turn and the wage share, that is what's paid to employees, is going to increase as a share of total economic output. That really hasn't occurred since the 1970s."

Mr Barr said the share of total economic output going towards wages had been declining for four decades, which had driven up inequality, but the market would force this to change in the post-lockdown era.

"We're going to see employees be able to earn more. We're seeing it in hospitality already, and I think a lot of jobs that were seen as quite dispensable or low paying or low skilled are going to be seen as indispensable, get more pay and an even stronger desire from employers to retain their staff and to attract new ones," he said.

Wages in the ACT's private sector grew 2.1 per cent in the year to June, while public sector wages grew 1.1 per cent in the same period. The territory's wages growth was the second highest in Australia, but average adult weekly earnings in the ACT remain the nation's highest.

Mr Barr also pointed to a federal Treasury estimate that there was $330 billion in extra savings across Australian households and businesses, of which the ACT would have a share of about 2 per cent.

"There's $6 billion more sitting there than there was two years ago, as a result of all of the government stimulus payments, both federal and territory. That money is going to be spent - we're already seeing it, in terms of spending in our economy now and that's going to pick up pace over the next four to six weeks," he said.

Mr Barr said Australia would have a bumper summer period of travel spending, and data from banks had already shown spending across the country was higher now than it was at the same point in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Canberra's going to be a big part of that [recovery] and our above national average incomes are going to be spent in our economy, so that's going to be welcome news to a lot of businesses in the ACT," he said.

"The challenge of course for every business is to get their share of that, to think creatively about how they can grow their markets and I know there's a lot of businesses that are doing that right now."

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Canberra Business Chamber chief executive Graham Catt said local operators were yet to experience the need locally to pay increased wages to attract staff, but businesses would face increased wages bills in the future.

Mr Catt said the extra cost in wages would ultimately be passed on to consumers in higher prices for goods and services.

"It's really the skills story. Finding the people we need, finding the skills we need, finding the workers we need is a challenge in Canberra. Again this goes back to government and business working together and finding solutions for the long term so the shortage of workers and the shortage of skills won't be a handbrake on our economic growth," Mr Catt said.

Restrictions in the ACT will be further eased from 11.59pm on Thursday, including the removal of a widespread mask-wearing mandate and a relaxed density limit of one person for every 2 square metres, a move welcomed by businesses.

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