It turns out that over half of Australia’s young adults are still living with their parents and the numbers are rising, especially for dames.
That’s people aged 18-to-29, not young people that are kids. Kids still do predominately live with their families, that’s not news.
But in yet more less-than-promising news taken from the latest Housing Income and Labour Dynamics survey (known as the HILDA Survey because it’s a kickin’ sort of a name for a thing) it turns out that kids aren’t moving out as early as they used to. Or, in some cases, at all.
The number of men living with a parent or two jumped from 47 per cent in 2001 to 56 per cent in 2017; but the number of women in the same boat went from 36 per cent to 54 per cent. Which is a heck of a jump.
So if you’re still living with parents, know that you’re not alone. At least, not nearly as often as you’d like.
There are some other surprising findings from the data: people in smaller towns moved out earlier than those in cities, the fastest growth in staying-put is in Queensland, and some of the reasons might be quite positive ones.
For example, it seems that are more people pursuing higher study, and some of the numbers might be people travelling before entering the full-time workforce.
But other big factors like the causualisation of the workforce making incomes less reliable, as well as increased housing costs, are less easy to spin into upbeat headlines.
And those lower rates of moving out in smaller towns might reflect that property is cheaper, or it might reflect people leaving to find work in cities.
In any case, let’s hear it for the parents. Goddamn but they put up with a lot.
