'We're not asking for an easy life': The three key issues at the heart of Australia's 'polycrisis'

For 24-year-old Sophie Blach, the future feels increasingly difficult to plan.

Working full-time hours in retail and hospitality while undertaking her degree, she said she has been forced to return to her Brisbane family home while she tries to save a deposit to eventually buy a property.

But rising everyday costs mean saving is difficult, leaving her feeling as though the traditional path into adulthood is becoming increasingly out of reach.

"I feel like I'm doing everything you're told you're supposed to do. I'm working, I'm studying, I'm saving when I can," she told SBS News.

"But I wouldn't say my goals feel in reach."

Young Australians are struggling to plan for the future

Sophie's experience reflects a broader trend identified in a new five-year analysis of the Australian Youth Barometer.

The Monash Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice has tracked more than 2,700 Australians aged 18 to 24 since 2021, examining their experiences across work, education, housing, wellbeing, relationships and civic participation.

Its latest report describes young Australians as living through a "polycrisis" of overlapping economic, social, environmental and political pressures that compound one another.

Affordable housing was the biggest issue young people flagged as needing urgent action, rising from 60 per cent in 2022 to 82 per cent in 2025.

Also recognised as needing urgent action was employment opportunities, which rose from 48 in 2022 to 64 per cent in 2025. Climate change was identified as an issue needing urgent action by 44 per cent in 2025, falling from 47 per cent in 2022.

Monash University professor Lucas Walsh, the report's lead author, says the significance of the findings is in how those issues connect.

"These are all embedded within the idea of a polycrisis, which involves overlapping independent events in crisis that intersect and amplify each other," he told SBS News.

Walsh said the study started tracking young Australians at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a five-year window into how their lives and priorities have changed as the country moved through and beyond it.

He describes the pandemic as a "flash of light into more persistent problems" which exposed pressures that were already disproportionately affecting young people.

For Sophie, housing uncertainty isn't isolated from the rest of her life.

Housing and financial pressure are compounding

"I don't necessarily expect to own a house tomorrow, but I would like to feel like it's something I could realistically work towards. It can be discouraging to feel like the goalposts for how much I need to have saved, how much I need to be earning or even spending to get a home keeps changing," she said.

Wendy Stone, a professor of housing and social policy at Swinburne University, told SBS News that secure housing provides the foundation that young people need to establish independence, work, study and relationships.

But she said Australia's housing system is increasingly failing to provide that security, which can affect whether young people can sustain employment or education and even their ability to plan ahead.

"The affordability problem compounds other parts of our system's structural challenges for young people," stone said.

"One of the things that we do know is that the earlier you can get into a secure housing situation, the more likely you are to be able to pursue your education, your employment and your relationships in a way that is sustainable."

Stone said governments need to treat secure, affordable housing as an investment in young people, rather than relying on increased housing supply alone.

She points to targeted housing subsidies for young people undertaking study or training, alongside stronger protections and incentives for long-term renting.

The pressures are also being felt in young people's mental health, with the Barometer finding 99 per cent of the young Australians surveyed reported at least one feeling of anxiety or pessimism in 2025.

Meanwhile, the proportion who sought and received mental-health support fell from 31 per cent in 2021 to 23 per cent in 2025.

Professor of psychiatry Ian Hickie said much of the distress being experienced by young people is connected to practical pressures in their everyday lives.

"A lot of distress is being expressed by young people at the moment has to do with these broader sets of issues that are confronting them on a daily basis," he said.

He said solutions need to be practical measures, from reducing transport costs and providing rental assistance to improving access to health and other essential services.

Climate change adding another layer

Sydney University research fellow Scarlett Smout said young people can feel particularly powerless because they have been "failed by generations preceding them" and now feel they have inherited a problem they have little individual power to solve.

She told SBS News that effective solutions need to create connection and agency, including better access to nature, public transport and community spaces, while making clear that responsibility cannot rest on individuals alone.

"Seeing the government address climate change as a matter of inter-generational inequality but also inter-generational fairness … would hopefully provide some assurance to young people that this matter is being taken seriously and not just the can being kicked down the road."

For Sophie, her concerns can feel inseparable.

"I don't think we're asking for an easy life. We just want to believe that if we work hard, we'll have some control over what happens next," she said.

"In my parents' generation it was more simple, so I didn't think I would be making all these sacrifices and doing all the right things and still not have any reprieve or certainty over what my future will look like. It's demotivating."

Walsh urged governments to respond to these overlapping issues by breaking down siloed policy approaches and, crucially, giving young people a meaningful role in shaping the policies that affect them.

Bleak but not hopeless

The Barometer also found that young people's belief that change is possible improved following the 2025 federal election.

But for Sophie, that hope remains conditional.

"I recognise the privilege we have here in Australia and I do believe there are ways to fix the problems people in my generation are concerned about," she said.

"I try to stay optimistic; it would just help if there was a bit more to be hopeful about, or if it felt like my generation's concerns were actually being prioritised or even considered."

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