Global survey of Generation Y finds young Australians among the least optimistic in the world and no longer see their home as ‘the lucky country’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Millennial Australians are among the most pessimistic in the world about their future prospects, with anxieties exacerbated by housing affordability and the perceived threat of terrorism.

A survey of members of Generation Y by the accounting firm Deloitte has found 8% of those in Australia believed they would be better off financially than their parents, and only 4% thought they would be happier.



Gen Y is those born between 1982 and 1999, making them aged between 18 and 35. Deloitte interviewed 7,900 people from 30 countries – including 300 from Australia – in September last year.

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By contrast, 26% of millennials globally believed they would be wealthier than their parents and 23% said they would be happier.

Almost 60% of Australian millennials also stated they planned to quit their job within the next two years, up from 46% the previous year. Twenty-eight percent also expected Australia’s economy to improve in the next 12 months, compared with a global average of 45%.

Fewer than one in 10 Australian millennials were optimistic about the future – far behind global counterparts. Nearly a third (30%) were worried by the threat of terrorism, while 27% had more general concerns about crime and personal safety.

Climate change and the environment concerned 26% of Australian millennials, just ahead of income inequality (25%) and health (20%).

David Hill, the chief operating officer of Deloitte Australia, pointed to rising house prices in Sydney and Melbourne as partly to blame for the pessimism.



House prices in Sydney – where the dwelling price to income ratio is approaching 8.5 times – rose 1% in January to a median price of $970,000 for houses and $725,0000 for apartments, while Melbourne followed closely behind.

Hill said Australian respondents may have been especially influenced by the question of relativity to their parents, many of whom would have bought their own home while in their 20s or 30s.

“The question didn’t ask ‘are you happy’, or ‘do you feel financially or materially well off’. ... When you consider the deposits a young millennial would have to find to put down on a home in Sydney or Melbourne, some would see the great Australian dream of owning your own home is but a dream.”

But he said pessimism over Australia’s economy was misplaced given it was about to record its 26th year without a recession, and was ideally placed to benefit from growth in Asian markets.

“There’s this sense that millennials have that it can’t continue to be this good, and maybe the rhetoric coming out from the political sphere and the media more generally is affecting their sentiment. ... I’d have thought they have more reason to be optimistic.”

Nor did fears expressed about terrorism reflect the fact that Australia was “incredibly safe”. The rise of concern about violence had displaced the environment as a top concern for millennials and had effectively made tackling climate change less of a priority than in previous studies.

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But a bigger gulf than between Australia and the rest of the world was that between the 16 emerging markets surveyed – including India, the Philippines, China and Brazil – and the 14 mature ones, including Australia.



Hill said this was “very, very stark”.

Millennials in emerging markets generally expected to be financially and emotionally better off than their parents, while those in mature markets felt theirs was “the generation where things very much stopped getting better”.

Pessimism was “rampant” among millennials in the developed world, with the US the only mature market where a majority expected to be better off than their parents.

Barely one in three (34%) expected economic conditions to improve in the next year, while confidence levels in emerging markets had increased since the preceding survey and were the highest Deloitte had recorded.

Millennials, especially those in mature European economies, had serious concerns about the directions in which their countries were headed and were particularly concerned about uncertainty arising from conflict.



In 19 of the 30 countries covered by the survey, terrorism was a bigger concern than unemployment. Of the remaining 11, only one – Spain – was a mature western market.