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This story is part of a series called “Millennial World,” which seeks to examine the state of the generation around the globe.
American millennials aren’t the only ones derided for spending all their money on avocado toast.
That globe-spanning, generation-defining stereotype, in fact, originated in Australia.
In 2017, 60 Minutes Australia asked Melbourne real-estate mogul Tim Gurner if Australian millennials were forever locked out of the housing market.
“Absolutely, when you’re spending AU$40 a day on smashed avocados and coffees, and not working,” he replied — a comical exaggeration of the situation that has been applied to millennials around the world.
The similarities between Australian and American millennials don’t stop there, according to data from the Australian Census Bureau. Both cohorts are less religious; delaying marriage and kids; highly educated with lingering student debt; and earning more than their parents, but feeling like it doesn’t go as far.
But, look closely and things are a little different down under.
Student debt is subsidized by the Australian government, doesn’t start until you reach a certain income threshold, and is indexed to inflation — making it much less daunting than in the United States.
Also frustratingly locked out of the housing market, Australian millennial voters have pushed a third-party, the Greens, into a seat at the table.
The Australian economy has undergone a “massive transformation” that “confuses the picture” on what adulthood looks like for the average Australian, Professor Peter Whiteford, who teaches public policy at Australian National University, Canberra, told Insider.
Millennials, he explained, are “both working very hard and feel like it’s difficult to get ahead.”
Their incomes are higher: Weekly pay for millennials sits at AU$1,527 — the equivalent of $57,304 annually in the US. At the same age, Gen Xers and baby boomers were taking home AU$930 and AU$520, respectively, according to the Australian Census Bureau. But, the rising cost of living without the financial security of major assets, like a house, makes it feel like that paycheck is having to stretch farther.
In their annual survey, Australian financial site Finder reported that 60% of millennials said they experienced financial stress in 2022 compared to only 29% of baby boomers.
“The incomes of millennials have actually grown faster than the incomes of baby boomers,” Whiteford said. “But their wealth hasn’t.”
Millennials in Australia are forming households later as well. They are just as likely as previous generations to live with a partner, but half as likely to have kids, also according to the Census. In 2021, over half of millennials had never been married, double the amount of baby boomers who still hadn’t walked down the aisle by 1991.
Student debt doesn’t hang over the heads of Australian millennials the same way it does their American counterparts.
Tuition fees are less expensive than in America. Most Australians attend public universities where tuition fees range, on average, between $10,000 to $22,000, according to LendingTree. The average Australian carries a student debt of AU$24,000, or $16,000.
Currently, borrowers don’t need to start paying back student debt until they’re earning AU$51,000, and the amount they pay scales up based on income.
Riley Grogan, 31, is just days away from paying off his debt for the three years he attended university.
“Most people don’t think about that debt,” because it’s a payment included as part of your taxes, he explained. Grogan studied engineering, but dropped out one year shy of his degree.
Grogan’s engineering program was a four-year degree, though many programs in Australia are only three years — another factor that lessens the amount of student debt Australian millennialls accrue.
“It’s really not a pressure that people carry around with them because it just exists in this little amorphous thing, like the rest of your taxes,” he said.
He took a gap year after two years of college and traveled to Iceland and the United States. After school, he worked as a ski instructor and a blackjack dealer, before settling in a job in information technology.
“It’s a massive cultural value. You go and you travel,” he said of the gap year, a common practice throughout the country. Most Australians, Grogan explained, have the view that because the flight is so long and expensive to visit Europe and the United States, you might as well make it an extended trip.
Housing is a major issue for millennial Australians. The likelihood of owning a home declined 10% compared to baby boomers, according to the Census, in the face of skyrocketing house prices.
Millennials are more likely to live in an apartment or a detached home on a larger property. Grogan currently lives with his partner in Wollongong, about an hour drive south of Sydney, in an ADU behind a home that his friends own.
Perth resident and single mom Lucy Banks was working as a bank teller with two children and wanted the financial security of a home. She quit her job in 2019 and started an account on OnlyFans. She said her income tripled over three years. Banks told Insider she brought in AU$400,000 last year.
In 2021, she bought a three-bedroom home for AU$270,000 and rode the turbulence of the housing market firsthand.
During the pandemic, average home prices rose three times the pace of household income in Australia. Since June 2020, property prices nationwide have risen 26%.
Perth is located on the west coast of Australia, 2,400 miles away from the uber-expensive cities of Sydney and Melbourne, where median home prices sit above AU$1 million. Still, Banks’ property greatly increased in value since her purchase. Combined with her success online, she was able to sell the first house just over a year later for AU$350,000 and move her family into a AU$1 million property.
Banks is grateful for her position, but doesn’t think homeownerhip should be this out of reach for her generation.
“It’s not because people are being irresponsible. I don’t think the government is doing enough,” she said. “It’s a basic human right.”
She echoes many young Australians’ sentiment that responsibility rests with the federal government.
This generational position has been reflected in voting patterns. Australia is mostly run by two major political parties. As millennials reach adulthood, they are throwing support behind a third party, the Greens.
“At no time in the 35-year history of the AES has there been such a low level of support for either major party,” Professor Ian MacAllister, who teaches political science at the Australian National University, told the Australian Financial Review in December 2022.
Instead, many millennials are flocking to the Greens, which have made housing costs and the climate crisis major issues of its platform. A new report in the Sydney Morning Herald said “more millennials and Gen Zers voted for the Greens” than the major conservative party last election. The paper also projects that, given current millennial voting trends, the major right-leaning party could lose up to 35 seats in the 227-seat parliament.
Just this month, the Greens pushed for rent freezes nationwide and have gone head-to-head with the major parties on funding for future housing.
Banks said many of her friends are living at home with parents to save for a down payment or are near giving up entirely at the prospect of buying a house.
“We’re not just buying avocado on toast. Everyone is trying to save, but they still can’t do it,” she said.
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