Cost of Living in Australia: A CPI Story (2010–2025)

We begin with a heatmap showing how location affects the cost of living across Australia.
It captures CPI variation both over time (2010–2025) and across cities in a single view.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) influences everyday expenses like rent, groceries, fuel, and healthcare.
Urban centres with consistently higher CPI, such as Sydney and Melbourne, place a greater cost burden on residents.

This nationwide comparison highlights geographic inequalities — city dwellers often face faster-rising prices than those in regional areas.
It prompts important questions around wage fairness, housing policy, and economic planning.

Now let’s zoom in on Melbourne, one of Australia’s most populous and expensive cities.

We used a dygraph interactive time series to explore how the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Melbourne evolved from 1948 to 2025 — nearly 80 years of economic history.

This long-term view highlights waves of inflation, structural economic shifts, and external shocks.

• CPI has risen steadily, with sharper growth since the 2000s.
• Key contributors include rising housing, food, and essential services.
• The recent spike reflects the impact of COVID-19, global disruptions, and supply chain shocks.

We focused on essential living sectors — including food, housing, and transport — to understand how CPI has changed in the most impactful areas of daily life. These are the costs that affect every household, every week.

• Housing and food CPI show a consistent upward trend post-2010.
• Transport CPI is more volatile, likely tied to fuel prices and external shocks.

Low-income households, renters, and families spend a larger share of income on these essentials — meaning CPI spikes hit them harder.

A multi-line plot helps clearly compare trends across sectors over time.
Interactive tooltips let us focus on when and which sector rose the most.

To compare sector-level CPI changes over the 2010–2025 period, we used a horizontal bar chart to contrast which sectors experienced high vs. low inflation.

• Housing, Insurance, and Education saw substantial CPI increases.
• Communication and Recreation remained relatively flat — highlighted in red.

High inflation in essential sectors means households cannot avoid the cost. Disparities like these intensify pressure on low- and fixed-income groups, especially when essentials grow faster than wages.

Color highlights help identify outliers quickly (red = low growth). Sorted bars improve readability and interactive tooltips add context.

We compared the CPI (cost of living) with the Wage Price Index in Melbourne to ask a crucial question:
Are incomes growing fast enough to keep up with prices?

• From 2010 to ~2018, CPI and wages grew in sync.
• Post-2019, CPI outpaces wages, especially during and after COVID-19.
• This gap signals real income loss — purchasing power is shrinking.

Groups hit hardest: working-class households, fixed-income earners, and young families who can’t rely on assets or capital income.