We Asked Our Members (AKA You) About the Future and It Turns Out: You’re Worried

We surveyed our members and, look, let’s just say: the figures are a touch alarming.

Earlier in the month, a national survey found Australian youths are growing increasingly frustrated and apathetic about the way the country is being run. It (rather depressingly) highlighted the fact that younger generations genuinely don’t envision a very bright future ahead of themselves.

In case you missed it, you can read all about the survey findings here.

The discussion around millennials being anxious about the future has been a fairly polarising one. Certain commentators are eager to push this image of millennials as being whiney, entitled brats who (apparently) don’t have a clue about the world around them.

We wanted to throw it to you guys—the members—to get a sense of what you’re worried about when thinking about life down the track.

(Now is probably a good time to warn any potential millennial-hatin’ baby boomers reading this article to calmly exit the tab.)

Figures from our survey of 669 members, aged 11 to 28, showed close to 70 per cent of you are worried about the future.

Sadly, the anxieties start creeping in quite early. Of those worried about the future, 67 per cent are in high school, while 25 per cent are studying at uni.

Almost half of you think it'll take at least six to 10 years to land in your dream profession, and 63 per cent think a university degree will be essential to land a full-time job ('dream job' or otherwise).

This means, for some, student debts will be pretty much unavoidable. But hey, about 33 per cent of you expect your dream job to come with a salary between $100,000 and a cool million dollars a year, so that will help.

Have you head this one? “I started saving when I was your age, and now I have a house. Nothin’ stopping you from doing the same.”

Well, actually, there is. In 1990, a worker aged in their fifties earned $AU220 a week more than someone in their early twenties. That gap has only widened in the decades since: to more than $AU600 today. This widening pay gap has coincided with growing rates of unemployment, made worse by industry decisions to shift away from full-time employment contracts to casual ones.

All in all, the current economic climate makes it very hard to, well, save money, which you kind of need to buy a house.

This explains why 29.4 per cent of those surveyed aged 18 or older think it will take at least 11 years to save for a house. Of those, 10 per cent think the wait could be as long as 20 years.

Well, at least the one positive take-away is 89 per cent of you think you will buy a house one day. Very refreshing optimism, nice.

Photo: Student Edge, Giphy and DreamWorks Television