This community is a place to discuss Australian youtuber, comedian, political commentator, investigative journalist and self help nerd Jordan Shanks aka friendlyjordies as well as topics relevant to his content. Unofficial.
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TIL $105K is AVERAGE.....
Yep, but there's a small amount of super high earners that push that number up. Median is a better measure for most purposes.
Which in this case is the typical at 90K?
Still a bit higher than I thought but I guess wage growth has been better the last few years.
Yeah it does seem pretty high. Wages have grown but not as fast as prices have increased. It should say median instead of typical, but it does specify that typical means median at the bottom.
Yeah I think it's time to ask for a pay rise. I might not be the greatest at my job but fuck at my rate it sounds like I'm getting paid less than a part timer 😅.
Wages have only been outpaced by inflation in the last two years.
is it clear whether superannuation is part of the 90k, or whether 90k is counted even if someone is pro rated down to more like 72k (4 days a week)?
I am wondering whether this is super inclusive... Employee earning sounds like a total compensation. So 105k is around 95K base
Im poor as fk then haha
Forget average, look for typical
adjusted for household size seems like the most accurate section, though id like to know what they think disposable income means, if those numbers are after mortgages/bills etc they're cooked
Mean sort of average.
Full time av 90k. Wow ... I need a union.
Correct.
I'm in a unionised job, and it's pretty sweet. Do you know which your union would be?
I'm in a union, still getting paid 40k less than market value but its not really their fault though. Just is what it is.
The median 25-40 year old having $0 in home equity is quite something.
Wow that is bonkers.
Well equity is built up over time so certainly to be expected. There's also a generational change with young people borrowing against their home loans more than their parents and grandparents did
Yeah but with how house prices are constantly increasing, outright $0 in equity basically points to the median 25-40 year old simply not owning a home.
I think the bigger travesty is the age brackets they have created. Socially and economically, a 40 year old has more in common with someone closing in on 60 than they do with a 25 year old.
That's part of why I'm confused, it's such a wide age group, so how could it possibly be $0? Because aren't we also an aging population, meaning the group would be at least slightly slanted towards older people who should be more likely to be homeowners and have at least some equity built up?
Worth mentioning I'm no statistician lol, entirely possible that I just don't understand what I'm looking at.
Huh?
If people have kids at around 30, then a 40 year old is supporting and caring for 10 year olds.
The 60 year old has 30 year old children.
That sort of makes sense though, the median age is going to be less then 32.5 (likely to be more people in the 25-32.5 age range then the 32.5-40 age range). Most people don’t buy their first home until their early 30s. So if the median age for buying a first home is 31 and the median age in that group is 30.5, you wouldn’t expect the median person in that group to own a home (although it’s possible they do).
You’d expect that to grow pretty quickly as you go up the percentiles though, which it does, as you’d expect those at the 60th percentile to have bought their first home. What’s more interesting is that the 25th percentile in the 41-64 age bracket doesn’t appear to have gotten a home. Given that home loans are typically 30-years, that would suggest that at least 25% of people over 41 years old probably won’t own a home.
I thought I’d read the median age for a first home owner is now mid/late 30’s (I wanna say 36-37 from memory), which would probably support this too.
The typical retired having no super at all is pretty worrying. I know we love to hate boomers for hoarding wealth, but these stats paint a picture of pensioners struggling. 400k is a good nest egg but if all of their wealth is tied into a home what are they actually living on. That type of wealth is not liquid. And I guess they can sell it to fund retirement but how far does 400k get you over 20yrs?
These type of stat's really solidify for me that the problem of wealth inequality is not generational. That's just another excuse to detract from class solidarity.
I'm guessing it's because a lot of them didn't have compulsory super during their working life and the compulsory percentage was quite low to begin with when first introduced.
This number should improve with gen x now getting to retirement in the coming years.
IF they worked in public service or similar fields, many would have been able to access their retirement funds at between 50 - 75% of their final yearly salary for the rest of their lives.
For example, my own mother, a 'boomer' who taught all her life, but only was able to access super towards the end of her career, was able to access the old style 'golden handshake' where she was able to be paid approx. 65% of her final salary yearly. It had a name that is on the tip of my tongue...
Defined Benefits
Thank you! It was killing me I couldn't remember.
At which point the will be new ways to take it from them
I'm gen x. Super is pretty low. You would be surprised how many of us have given up on it and are trying something else, investing wise. Looking at it, these funds take a real chunk out of it as 'fees'.
Me too. I have worked casual most of my life and until recently there was no super paid for casuals. I voluntarily paid into it but not that much.
One day we will work out that sitting in a million dollar house with little in the fridge and 2 empty bedrooms while receiving the pension is the strangest form of being wealthy, the kind that strangles basically all other forms of economic activity.
Problems of wealth inequality are obviously partly generational. Society is structured to protect assets of older generations, sometimes though maintaining artificial scarcity for younger generations.
Re The typical retired having no super, Once you retire the savvy retirees pull the super from the fund and invest elsewhere where it is no longer called super, that's why it's $0.
Re The $400k or so, they would be getting the earnings from this and at least a part government pension, if they haven't got a mortgage or paying rent they should be living quiet well.
Would you get better return than a super fund? There basically just ETF's. You can even pick the level of investment risk you want from your super fund.
As for earnings on a primary residence I'm not sure what you mean by that. Unless your assuming these assets include investment properties. And at only 450k I would be surprised if that accounted for two homes.
I think the other commenter has it right that we are just seeing the large number of low paid super funds from workers who didn't get super in their early working years and only received small contributions by today's standards.
Wasn't talking about $400k in properties, my portfolio is in stocks, the earnings on this covers what I am pulling down every month. works out at about 10% earnings on my investments after financial advisers fees taken out.
Oh okay I misunderstood. I'm impressed that 400k is enough to cover your expenses. At 8% return P.A that only like 32k.
Some of that data being around 5 years old (2019-2020 data on image 2, and part of image 1) and pre-covid would put it decently out of date. Ideally, I’d like data from 2022 on to truly capture the present state of Australia, as a lot has changed since then and would impact this significantly, but this must be all there is access to.
Especially on the Wealth data, but even the Income, the past 3 years have been significant.
Comparing my 2024 figures to the average 2021 figures is going to give me an inflated (pun intended) sense of things.
Which probably explains some of the comments ITT about “I’m in the Top x% but doesn’t feel like it” - no, these averages have all moved upwards (in some cases a lot) since the datasets were published.
Yeah like this being published as a 2024 cheat sheet just makes no sense.
Congrats everyone we’re all in the top 1% !!!!!
Make a lot of money but can’t afford anything. The norm in Canada, Australia and NZ.
Everywhere selling their essential residential properties to overseas land banking through shell companies
Surely that's coincidence
If I can see it, governing bodies can see that
57 male here
zero super (used it all up on hardship provisions due to illness )
income = jobseeker $415 a week
assets = $500,000 (fully own a house ,car and contents )
it just really baffles me. apparently we are in the top 20% of households as far as income goes, according to that, yet we have a modest mortgage (on a place thats about half the median value), no real fancy debts or expenses yet somehow barely make ends meet. saving is difficult. how is anyone surviving in this country?
Watching our family percentile of income and equity drop due to long term chronic illness is not a fun scenario (and then seeing more than 50% are much much worse) is pretty sobering.
We can’t raise pitchforks anymore, and I don’t know about you, but threatening with raised mechanical keyboards just isn’t the same.
Its not like they even have a cord anymore.
Ditto. We used to be able to enjoy a bunch of luxuries before the cost of living crisis, but the last couple of years have been kinda tight. Seems like it's even worse for many folks. :/
To put into perspective what you find baffling.
You earn more than 80% of aussies but spend less than them lol I pull around 180k a year, I live in a 130m2 norm middle income house on my own, drive an old hyundai cause it's cheap, I have a 06 landcruiser and a classic car also... I get told I should buy a new car constantly by people who carry the same amount of debt that I have as savings 🤷♂️
You'd be surprised how much people are willing to spend weekly on dead money rather than doing anything to get ahead is all I'm saying.
Bro this is it to a tee I have a 10k car a 8k bike they are my vices. Many bmw Porsche driving relos ask for loans on the regular and get stroppy with the 12% I ask for and the car being signed over as collateral
You are barely making ends meet but also:
"I dont know why but I seem to pick really expensive hobbies:
Warhammer/Miniature gaming (mainly a painter/modeller but I play sometimes)
Cameras (recently reactivating an older hobby and have dumped a significant amount of cash on a new body/lense ecosystem, but one I intend to stick with at least)
Cycling (at least no new bike this year, but I do want an enduro at some point)
Guitar (happy with current collection but a new amp would be sweet)
PC gaming (sorted new build a few months ago so im good for a little while)
Travel (here I actually am good at budget though and can travel on an oily rag)
I want to get into model railroads which would be an extension of my miniature hobby to a degree, but lack of space is an issue.
most of this is paid for by doing online surveys while I commute, believe it or not"
I mean are you just saying populist things for upvotes or are you just really ignorant lol
gotta love a good post stalker.
i pay for literally all that doing online surveys. if i dont make enough, i dont buy. I even pointed that out in the comment, clearly you didnt read.
my wage (and partners) goes entirely to bills. try again
"barely make ends meet"
why dont you use those online surveys to help support your family instead of struggling so much?
because i am supporting my family, with my wage. we dont have much leftover. like i said. i hustle on the side to fund my own hobbies. i think you read that and thought i bought all that shit in a month or something... dude thats years and years of hobbies slowly accumulating. in an avg year, i make maybe 5k doing this, sometimes a little more if the going is good. do you think my kids are walking around in rags while i game on a high end PC or something? now that i've spelt it out simply for you, kindly fuck off
Why is total net wealth level for 99th percentile so much higher than 99th percentile home equity
The 1% typically have a lot more investment wealth outside of their PPOR.
Guess the shareholdings of the top 0.1% skews the average
What is home equity?
Equity is the difference between the market value of your property and the amount you still owe on your home loan. Property value minus Amount owed equals Equity. For example, if your home is worth $400,000 and you still owe $220,000, your equity is $180,000.
Thanks
There's a lot of numbers there, but this is the one that is most meaningful:
Half the adults in Australia make less than $42,027 a year, and half make more.
They should have omitted the Average column - it's misleading. "Typical" (presumably the median) gives a clearer picture.
That includes a lot of retirees, students, people on working holidays, people on gap years, people working part time as a lifestyle choice (ie raising kids), backpackers etc. In short, it’s including a bunch of people willingly not working. If you’re excluding the average because it’s skewed by high earners, you should also only be looking at those who are actually working full time, unless you’re making the lifestyle decision not to and want to compare yourself to those people. Otherwise you’re deliberately being misleading. That’s 2 numbers above which is ~$90k, which is also much higher then the average, which shows which is having a much larger affect.
Your way is useful if you're a full-time worker thinking about your income in terms of your career choice and how it compares to others' careers.
My way is useful for thinking about cost-of-living issues for everybody in the country.
Horses for courses.
Still, if you’re doing it that way, you’re better off looking at the 2 numbers above yours, the first of which is ~$67k, the 2nd being the same ~$90k I referenced. That’s still only considering workers, but not just full-time workers. Note though, it will include those that are deliberately underemployed for lifestyle reasons (ie the part time worker with a young kid, or the uni student working a casual shift for 10hrs a week), but it will also include those who are underemployed and want to work full time but can only find casual or part time work. The number you’re wanting will be somewhere between that $67k and $90k mark, let’s say roughly high $70k. You’d then consider unemployment rates separately to understand those that are actually struggling even more.
That data is from 2019-20
Awesome... so I'm in the top 10% of income earners, but bottom 25% net wealth wise thanks to divorce. Not sure whether to be happy or incredibly disappointed.
Single people are constantly screwed over in AU.
r/coolguides
I feel poor af
Owning your home makes a big difference, once I own my home, my minimum wage job will make for comfortable lifestyle. But at that point young people who own nothing making more than me will be in a really shit situation.
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So get rid of the car loans
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You can't be properly living frugally with 2 new cars and car loans mate.
I earn a lot and still have an 09 hyundai i30 cause I don't care what people think of my daily car. I also drive about 140k's a day and do shift work.
The perception that debt is frugal is wild.
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Why do they need to be new cars on loans. Get 2 10k cars. As a family we earn almost 280k one of my cars is a $2k corolla the other we saved for and bought for $35k after having a $5k xtrail for years. You don’t need new cars.
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Immigrant here, just moved 3 years ago, I’m in the 1%, but I pay full bill for everything, childcare is something around 2700 AUD per month, rent 3400 AUD x month, 2 cars, medical insurance (now in the process for PR, but I will have to pay the Medicare cause I earn too much). If I want to buy a house where I live I would need to sell my properties back in Italy. Not looking for sympathy, I know how much you Aussies (moreover the Anglo-Saxon) can hate us, but it’s not all oysters and champagne..
Typical home equity = $0
yeah that tracks
Jesus I’m in the top 10%, certainly doesn’t feel like it
That is my business..not yours!
This information will be completely ignored the next time Speers, Karvelas and Jennett have to take up arms to support the battlers on only $250k a year.
These stats are fucking useless.
It would be good to see how much tax is paid and what percent of the population pays what.
Padding out that bottom 10% a little bit lol
But damn those are some bonkers numbers
3rd year apprentice, make 100k a year. Join your unions everyone!!!!
those $0s at the end.
The population is fucked.
That typical ownership for 25-40 is a whacked out age range. It’s skewing the results as you’re probably better off dividing that into two categories to show the difference between the two generations
If you are earning 58k and get $50k after tax your disposable income is more like zero not $50k. This confuses net income with disposable income. Big difference
Hey top 1%, look at that
And yet bottom 1% for tact
haha yeah you're right