The share of renters in regional Australia who are in housing stress is substantially higher than those in the cities, according to the latest Hilda survey, which has tracked the same households since 2001. Photograph: Darren England/AAPView image in fullscreenThe share of renters in regional Australia who are in housing stress is substantially higher than those in the cities, according to the latest Hilda survey, which has tracked the same households since 2001. Photograph: Darren England/AAPAnalysisYoung Australians are staying in the family home for longer – and it’s not hard to see why Patrick ComminsHousing costs are up with renters worst affected and financial stress is also growing, according to the largest survey of its type
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Every year, thousands of Australians answer a series of questions as part of the long-running Hilda survey.
This questionnaire – more expansively known as the household, income and labour dynamics in Australia survey – has been tracking the same households since 2001.
As the families have expanded over the past two decades, the survey has grown to include about 17,000 people a year in 9,000 households, offering a unique insight into Australian life in the 21st century – and how it has changed.
This week, the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, which manages the survey, published its annual snapshot of the social and economic trends shaping Australia.
The trend is clear: leaving the nest has become ever harder.
In 2001, 39% of people aged 18-29 were living at home with their folks. Fast forward to 2024, and that figure is just shy of 50%.
Young men are more likely to live at home than women, but that gap has shrunk a bit over the 23 years. And 36% of 18- to 29-year-olds living at home in 2024 are full-time students.
It’s also notable that the big shift towards staying at home happened through the first decade of the century.
More of us studying for longer is one answer, but so is the mounting cost of moving out, which we’ll turn to a bit further below.
Employment rates reached record highs in 2024, with the survey showing 84.4% of working-age men and 76% of working-age women had jobs.
Aussie workers are better educated – more than half of women aged 25-44 now hold a university degree.
Men are better educated now than at the start of the century, too, but in every age group women were found to be “considerably better educated than men,” the report said.
But there is one group where employment outcomes have become much worse.
As Kyle Peyton, a co-author of the report, says: “Men aged 25 to 44 who did not complete year 12 have become less likely to be in full-time work and more likely to be outside the labour force”.
“Their full-time employment rate fell from 70% in 2001 to 63% in 2024, while the share outside the labour force rose from 12% to 22%,” Peyton says.
Women who never finished high school – and did not achieve any other higher education – have also dropped out of the workforce at greater rates: from 40% in 2001, to 48% in 2024.
That’s not as sharp an increase, but still much higher than for men.
The pandemic, the huge lockdown payments from governments, and the post-Covid inflationary outbreak has made for a bumpy ride.
Median disposable (or after tax) household incomes peaked in 2021, before being pummelled by soaring living costs from 2022. The Hilda survey shows the typical household was earning less in 2024 than the recent peak in 2021, but more than in 2019.
Looking longer term, the survey shows household incomes lifted strongly through the first decade of the century, before plateauing right up to the pandemic.
Australians report lower financial wellbeing on average than they did before Covid-19, despite higher median household incomes.
As Inga Lass, the lead author of the report, says “the post-pandemic shock to cost-of-living is clear”.
There were declines in reported financial wellbeing across age groups between 2020 and 2024 – except for the over-65s.
The survey asked five questions and asked people how well it described them from one (“not at all”) to five (“completely”). The researchers then converted this to a wellbeing score out of 100 (where the higher the number, the higher the wellbeing).
The share of people who could enjoy life “not at all” or “very little” due to their money management lifted from 11.3% in 2020 to 12.7% in 2024. And in 2020, 62.1% agreed or strongly agreed that they felt on top of everyday finances; by 2024 it was 58.5%.
And while 60% of people in 2020 agreed or strongly agreed they were comfortable with their current spending relative to the money coming in, that share had dropped to 53.8% in 2024.
“These results imply that worsening perceptions of meeting shorter-term ‘every day’ financial outcomes explain a sizeable shift in the reported decline in financial wellbeing over the four-year period,” the report said.
Of course, we all know that the cost of keeping a roof over your head (and your family’s) has been a major factor in the new era of high living costs.
The Hilda survey shows weekly mortgage payments – including principal and interest – jumped between 2021 and 2024 to reach new highs as the Reserve Bank jacked up interest rates.
Fast forward to today, and the RBA has reversed the three rate cuts it made in 2025, which means the burden on mortgage holders is similar to when the last survey took place.
The survey shows weekly private rental costs were pretty steady through the 2010s, but have since climbed higher and higher.
And while overall household incomes are lower than they were in 2021, housing costs are higher – which has heaped pressure on many Australians.
The Hilda survey uses the “30-40 rule” to measure housing stress.
A household is in housing stress if housing costs are more than 30% of disposable household income, and the household is in the bottom 40% of households by disposable income.
Among the cities, renters in Sydney are the most likely to be experiencing housing stress, with more than 31% meeting the definition in 2024 – that’s about twice the rate in Adelaide.
The next toughest market is in Brisbane, with 26% of renters in housing stress. Across the mainland capital cities, one in four are in housing stress.
As high as those rates are, the share of regional renters in housing stress is substantially higher at 30%, and nearly double what it was before the pandemic.
In contrast, about one in 10 mortgaged owners are in housing stress, and that number has generally held steady over the past 20-plus years.
Patrick Commins is Guardian Australia’s economics editor
