Australia has experienced only one recession in over 30 years. Wages have risen significantly. By most measures, quality of life has improved.

Yet for Australians in their 20s, 30s and 40s — the cohort who should be building wealth, buying homes and starting families — financial progress feels out of reach.

This analysis unpacks why. Not all prices rise equally and the things that matter most to building a life have dramatically outpaced wages. This has quietly eroded discretionary spending power even as headline incomes grew and explains why it might feel easier to buy new clothes, but harder to buy a house.

Source: ABS (2017)

## # A tibble: 7 × 3
##   year  group_simplified share
##   <chr> <fct>            <dbl>
## 1 1984  Housing           12.8
## 2 1989  Housing           14.3
## 3 1994  Housing           14.2
## 4 1999  Housing           13.9
## 5 2004  Housing           16.1
## 6 2010  Housing           18.0
## 7 2016  Housing           19.6

The data confirms what people already feel

Since 1998, Australian wages have grown by 131%. Over the same period, housing costs rose by 182%. Education by 249%. The things you can’t opt out of have quietly outpaced every dollar of wage growth.

The result is a generation earning more in nominal terms, but with less left over for everything else. People can still go out and buy a nice phone, and a new jacket, but more and more people cannot get on top of the basics.

Reserve Bank of Australia. (2026). Consumer price inflation – expenditure groups [Data set]. Retrieved April 14, 2026, from https://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/tables/xls/g02hist.xlsx

Reserve Bank of Australia. (2026). Consumer price inflation [Data set]. Retrieved April 14, 2026, from https://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/tables/xls/g01hist.xlsx

Reserve Bank of Australia. (2026). Labour costs and productivity [Data set]. Retrieved April 14, 2026, from https://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/tables/xls/h04hist.xlsx

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2017). Household expenditure survey, Australia: Summary of results, 2015–16 [Data set]. Retrieved April 14, 2026, from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/finance/household-expenditure-survey-australia-summary-results/2015-16