‘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

Young Australians are growing increasingly anxious about their economic futures. According to a five-year study reported by The Conversation, young people aged eighteen to twenty-four cite affordable housing, job security, and climate change as their top concerns. While unemployment dropped from sixty percent to forty-four percent from twenty twenty-one to twenty twenty-five, casual employment surged from eighteen to thirty-two percent—trading joblessness for job insecurity. Eighty-two to ninety percent of young people reported financial stress each year, and those who believed they could afford a comfortable home within a year fell from forty-six to just thirty percent. Researchers call this convergence of economic, environmental, and social pressures a 'polycrisis'—and one nineteen-year-old summed up the uncertainty: 'I don't even know what things are going to look like in the next five years.'

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