‘I don’t even know what things are going to look like in the next five years’: young Australians on growing up in a world in crisis
- Written by: Weekend Times
Affordable housing options, jobs for young people and climate change are the top three issues young people say need immediate action, according to our new youth survey published today.
Our research, which involved 150 interviews and more than 2,700 survey responses over five years, tracked the challenges Australians aged 18–24 experienced during the COVID pandemic and its aftermath.
While there are signs of recovery in some areas, deep challenges persist in others. Importantly, our data provide insight into how young Australians experience interconnected pressures that reflect a “polycrisis”.
A polycrisis involves the convergence of overlapping economic, environmental, political, social and technological emergencies.
Each emergency worsens the others, resulting in compounded effects with typically unpredictable consequences.
What we did and what we found
Each year from 2021 to 2025, our Australian Youth Barometer gauged the interconnected pressures experienced by young Australians through this nationally representative sample of surveys, complemented by deep-dive interviews.
Our team analysed areas such as finances, work, wellbeing, relationships and young people’s civic participation in society.
While our surveys each year show an easing of pandemic‑related impacts on mental health, young people are still experiencing some of the highest rates of mental ill-health in Australia.
Young people continue to experience disproportionate labour-market vulnerability since COVID lockdown disruptions, workforce change and amid current cost of living pressures.
Insecure work, for example, is common.
The number of unemployed young people in our cohort fell from 60% in 2021 to 44% in 2025. However, the number who were casually employed grew from 18% to 32% across the five years.
Many young Australians more broadly are contending with a pandemic-related ripple effect of “employment scarring” – which is where a history of unemployment starts to make a candidate “look bad” in the eyes of future employers. This can hinder long-term employment prospects for young people entering weak labour markets.
Workforce insecurity in these critical years can lead to lower earnings over time, harm wellbeing and delay big life decisions, such as starting a family.
We found financial stress was widespread across all five years, with 82–90% experiencing some difficulty each year. Family was the main source of financial support.
One 20-year-old Queenslander’s big concern was
this cost of living at the moment […] I’m just worried that it’ll be harder for me to get a job from my course or whatever, or that if stuff like cost of living and everything keeps going up, no matter if I get a job, I wouldn’t be able to, like, stay on top of that.
Fewer young people were able to save regularly (declining from 49% to 43% across the five years). Confidence in achieving financial security declined from 53% to 46%.
Those believing they could afford a comfortable home in the next year dropped from 46% to 30%. Longer‑term optimism about securing home ownership fluctuated between 41% and 49%.
Responding to polycrisis
Looking ahead to those coming years, what do young Australians think needs immediate attention? Our respondents called for:
- affordable housing options (increasing from 60% in 2022 to 82% in 2025)
- employment opportunities for young people (increasing from 48% in 2022 to 64% in 2025), and
- climate change (decreasing from 47% in 2022 to 44% in 2025 – but last year only 24% believed it likely or very likely climate change will be combated in future).
These issues were consistently the top three issues identified by young people that need immediate action. They are connected.
Wider research on global polycrisis conditions in housing markets highlights the interaction of inflation, labour insecurity, energy crises and financial instability.
Young people are entering a world of escalating climate change and geopolitical instability – and are acutely aware of it.
Arguably, many young people have been navigating a polycrisis since the global financial crisis of 2007–9. This might seem dramatic, but for young people these pressures are compounded and coalesce. One 19-year-old female interviewee told us last year:
Cost of living and housing crisis are pretty big barriers at the moment, but also just for me particularly it’s […] a lot of mental health difficulties and then the physical health stuff on top of that doesn’t help either […] There is heaps of stuff going on in the world so I don’t even know what things are going to look like in the next five years and there could be new barriers popping up.
For young people living through today’s polycrisis, the pandemic may have receded from view, but the horizon looks more uncertain.
Policymakers must understand young people’s interconnected pressures, rather than treating them as isolated issues. Year on year, interviewees saw these connections between the psychological, economic, social and political aspects of their lives.
It’s time policy makers see them as interconnected too – and act accordingly.
Lucas Walsh receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
