Photo credit: Daily Mail
The Australian middle class is vanishing at breakneck speed, as families, workers and renters find themselves priced out of the lifestyle once considered the norm.
The Daily Mail reports that for 25-year-old student and barista Saxon, owning a home in a safe, comfortable suburb isn’t a distant goal – it’s a fantasy.
Where earlier generations mapped out lives with mortgages, marriages and kids, Saxon’s dreams are more humble: paying rent without panc, taking one holiday a year, and not having to think twice about buying a daily coffee.
“Without parental help or government aid, it’s impossible to live, let alone study to get a better job,” he said.
“Most people I know would love to own a home, get married, and have kids, but I don’t think that’s realistic anymore unless you’re comfortable financially.”
Despite Australia’s middle-class income band sitting between roughly $60,000 and 150,000, the median full-time salary of $78,000 is no longer enough to sustain a middle-class lifestyle as rents, mortgages, childcare and healthcare surge.
Australia is now home to 48 billionaires who hold more wealth than the bottom 40 per cent of the population combined, according to a report released by Oxfam this year.
Oxfam Australia chief executive Jennifer Tierney said the wealth divide has worsened sharply since the pandemic, with more than 3.7 million people now living in poverty.
“While millions of Australians are cutting back[ on essentials, struggling with rents and mortgages, and watching global crises… Australia’s billionaires are accumulating extraordinary wealth at extraordinary speed,” she said.
Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher warned the nation is sliding into a “U-shaped society”, split between asset-rich owners and a swelling cohort permanently locked out of home ownership.
He said the middle class has shrunk dramatically, with only 58 per cent of Australians now in the “middle-income” group, below the OECD average and well down from previous decades.
By the 1980s, most Australians saw themselves as solidly “middle class” – a modest home complete with a Hills Hoist and a yearly holiday.
Now those foundations are cracking, with the soaring cost of simply keeping a roof over your head delivering the biggest blow to the middle-class dream.
The Great Australian Dream is fading as house prices – more than triple what they were in the 2000s race ahead of wages, forcing buyers into record debt or out of the market entirely.
A typical couple buying their first home can no longer afford an entry-level house in any Australian city, Domain data shows.
Domain’s chief of research and economics, Dr Nicola Powell, said buyers are taking on greater financial risk than at any time in the past decade.
“This is no longer just a Sydney problem. Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, once seen as more attainable, have seen rapid growth in entry-level prices, pushing them much closer to the least affordable markets,” she said.
Census data shows the national homeownership rate peaked at 71 per cent in 1966, and then dropped from 70 per cent in 2006 to 66 per cent in 2025.
