Why Gen Z Australians Are Moving Back Home

Why Choose This Story

According to a survey by Roy Morgan, the cost of living topic is the most talked about in Australia from the June quarter of 2022 to the September quarter of 2024, and the level of concern has risen from 50% to 57%. Housing affordability has also become one of the key issues in the recent Australian election, with all political parties campaigning on their commitment to reduce the cost of living through initiatives such as lowering housing costs and tax cuts.

Introduction

As inflation continues and rental prices soar in Australia’s major cities, more and more young people are choosing to move back to the places of their childhood and their parents’ homes. What was once the phenomenon of the Boomerang Generation is now becoming more prevalent as the cost of living continues to rise and economic pressures take their toll.

Background

PropTrack’s 2024 Rental Affordability Report shows that rental affordability in Australia is at its worst level in at least 17 years, with median household incomes increasing by 19% from 2019-2020 to 2023-2024, but incomes are growing much slower than rents are soaring.

This story looks at how living costs are changing the path to independent living for young people in Generation Z, including rising rents as well as wildly increasing food prices, stagnant wage levels, and other factors. Research from the ACCC and the Pew Research Centre will be cited in the article to demonstrate the stressful situation faced by today’s Generation Z and Millennials and the impact of the cost of living crisis on them.

This article will look closer at the real-life stories of Gen Z and Millennials who are forced to “come home” due to cost-of-living pressures. It will focus on several young people who have just retreated from their independent living status to a family living situation, showing the conflicts and challenges they face on a financial, emotional and social level.

Interview

With a background overview of relevant data and policies, this piece will focus on the stories of real people. Therefore, it will interview 1-2 young people who have just entered the workforce or recent graduates who have chosen to move back to their hometowns due to the pressure of the cost of living and analyze a series of issues related to the change of lifestyle of this generation through their first-person perspectives and with the combination of relevant economic data and policies at present.

Target Audience

I plan to pitch this story to ABC News Online, a platform that reaches a broad audience and continues to focus on social issues. The target audience includes young people concerned about the current cost of living and housing issues, social workers, relevant policy proponents, and other Australians concerned about living costs.

Conclusion

This presentation takes the major social issue of Australia’s cost of living crisis. It puts it into a humanized perspective, presenting a social story that resonates more with the new generation of young Australians and provokes readers to think about the struggles they are facing.