When Six Figures Feels Like Sixty: The Real Wage Squeeze Nobody Saw Coming
There’s a statistic doing the rounds that’s been gnawing at me for days now: nearly half of all full-time workers in Australia earn over $100,000 a year. When I first read that, my initial reaction was disbelief. Then I remembered what my salary was a decade ago, what it is now, and how much less I seem to have in my pocket at the end of each month despite earning considerably more on paper.
The numbers tell a story that feels all too familiar to anyone trying to keep their head above water in 2025. Back in 2010, only about one in ten full-time workers cracked six figures. It was a milestone, something to celebrate over drinks with your mates. Now? That $100,000 has the purchasing power of roughly $67,000 from 2010. We’ve all been running faster on the treadmill, watching the numbers tick up on our payslips, only to discover we’re actually going backwards.
The comment threads I’ve been reading are full of people sharing eerily similar experiences. Someone earning $135,000 feels like they had more disposable income seven years ago on $70,000. Another person, now on $85,000, wistfully remembers living in a newly built apartment with air conditioning and secure parking on just $25,000 a year - that same apartment now costs $750 a week. These aren’t isolated cases or people who’ve suddenly developed champagne tastes on a beer budget. This is structural.
What strikes me most is the absolute exhaustion in these stories. People aren’t just complaining about having less money for holidays or fancy dinners out. They’re talking about the grinding stress of maintaining what should be a modest, comfortable life. One person mentioned they’re on $100,000, have a kid, and feel like they’re working themselves to death just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. That’s not a sustainability problem - that’s a societal crisis.
The housing piece of this puzzle is the elephant crushing the room. When someone points out they’re now paying $800 a week for a place that would have cost $200 in 2010, or maybe $500 just a few years ago, you start to see where all that wage growth has gone. It’s been systematically siphoned off into property prices and rents. The entire productivity dividend of the Australian workforce over the past fifteen years has essentially been captured by landlords and mortgage holders.
I’ve been thinking about this through the lens of my own IT career. The DevOps field has exploded over the past decade - there’s constant demand, skills shortages, all that jazz. I’ve seen my nominal salary increase by a decent clip. But when I look at my actual quality of life? I’m not convinced I’m any better off than I was when I was earning significantly less. Sure, I can afford better coffee beans for my morning batch brew, but the big-ticket items - housing, utilities, insurance, even a basic grocery shop - they’ve all ballooned at rates that make any wage increase feel like a cruel joke.
And here’s the kicker that really gets under my skin: the tax brackets haven’t kept pace either. We’ve got bracket creep working in tandem with inflation to create this perfect storm of financial stagnation. Someone pointed out that the tax brackets have actually been adjusted somewhat over the years, and technically we’re paying similar overall rates to 2010. But that misses the broader point - when your rent has doubled or tripled, when childcare costs are astronomical, when every single utility and service has increased well beyond CPI, being in the same tax position doesn’t help much.
The whole Stage 3 tax cuts debacle was fascinating to watch play out. People on decent incomes who would have benefited from the original proposal were derided as “the rich” who didn’t need help. But hang on - when did earning $135,000 or even $200,000 make you wealthy? These are people who can’t afford to buy a modest home in our major cities without taking on crushing debt. They’re one redundancy away from genuine financial stress. The real wealth in this country sits in property portfolios and corporate balance sheets, yet we keep fighting amongst ourselves about whether someone on six figures deserves a slightly lower marginal tax rate.
What frustrates me is how predictable this all was, yet how little has been done to address it. The policy settings in this country have deliberately favoured asset owners over wage earners for decades. Negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions, artificially constrained housing supply - these aren’t accidents of nature. They’re choices. Political choices made by governments of both persuasions to prop up property values at the expense of everything else.
Someone in the discussion noted that median wages have technically kept pace with inflation when you look at the raw numbers - about $49,000 in 2010 versus $74,000 today. But median wages are a terrible measure of actual lived experience when housing costs have gone absolutely parabolic. If rent was still proportional to income the way it was fifteen years ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
The younger workers sharing their stories are the ones who really drive this home. Someone mentioned living comfortably on $45,000 as a part-time teacher in 2010 - nice apartment, car loan, holidays, savings, the works. Now they couldn’t even afford the rent on that same place, let alone anything else. That’s not lifestyle inflation or poor budgeting. That’s a fundamental breakdown in how our economy distributes the gains from productivity growth.
I keep coming back to what this means for the social contract in Australia. We’ve traditionally had this idea that if you work hard, get an education, and climb the career ladder, you’ll be rewarded with a comfortable life. Maybe not extravagant wealth, but security, dignity, the ability to raise a family without constant financial anxiety. That promise is breaking down before our eyes. When people earning well into six figures are struggling to get ahead, something has gone profoundly wrong.
The path forward isn’t simple, but it starts with acknowledging that wage growth alone won’t fix this. We need to address the structural issues driving up the cost of the essentials - particularly housing. That means confronting uncomfortable truths about property investment incentives, about zoning and planning restrictions, about the financialisation of what should be a basic human necessity. It means thinking seriously about how we tax wealth versus income, and whether our current settings are creating the kind of society we actually want to live in.
For now, though, I’ll settle for people understanding that when someone on $100,000 or $135,000 says they’re struggling, they’re not exaggerating or being entitled. They’re living the reality of an economy that’s been systematically reorganised to extract value from workers and transfer it to asset holders. The sooner we recognise that, the sooner we can start having honest conversations about how to fix it.