Survey reveals decline in Australian living standards

Leonard Johns

A recently published national survey reveals a long-term decline in living and working conditions across broad sections of the Australian population. This trend was already underway before 2020, but has sharply accelerated since the start of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Workers queuing at a Sydney Centrelink office in early 2020.

The Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) report, produced annually by the University of Melbourne since 2001, released its 2025 edition in September, based on data collected in 2023. HILDA tracks a cohort of some 17,000 respondents through their lives with annual surveys, collecting information on income, financial stress, childcare, retirement and health.

The 2025 report marks the 23rd wave of data collection. Its authors introduce the 212-page document noting, “An important theme of this year’s report is how Australians are faring in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and the sharp rise in the cost of living that has followed it.”

Between 2019 and 2023, median household disposable household income grew by just 1.5 percent when adjusted for inflation. But the official cost-of-living figures are a vast understatement. In the 2022–23 financial year alone, median advertised rents increased by 11.5 percent. Over the past decade, house rents have risen by an average of 59.8 percent across the country.

The survey found that 54.6 percent of workers experienced a decline in “equivalised income”—that is, adjusted to account for estimated household need—from 2022 to 2023, compared with 41.9 percent from 2018 to 2019.

Wealth inequality in 2023, measured by the Gini coefficient, fell slightly from its 2022 level but remained higher than at any other point since 2011, reflecting what the report describes as “growth in high incomes relative to middle incomes and declines in low incomes.”

Since 2021, all indicators of financial stress have increased. These indicators include having to ask for financial help from family, friends or welfare organisations; being unable to heat one’s home; skipping meals; pawning property, and falling behind on rent, mortgage, or utility payments.

Nearly 15 percent of respondents reported experiencing two or more indicators of financial stress in 2023—the highest level in over a decade. Single-parent families were hit hardest, with more than 30 percent reporting financial stress.

The Australian fertility rate—1.5 children per woman in 2023—continues to steadily decline, a decades-long trend. Notably, there has been a marked increase in the number of respondents citing financial pressures as the main driver of their decision to have fewer children or none at all. Compared to 2008, concern about the cost of raising children increased by 7.9 percent among women and 10.1 percent among men in 2023. 

HILDA data show that since 2005, the desire to have no children increased more than any other childbearing preference, rising from less than 8 percent to around 14 percent among women (a 43 percent increase) and from 11 percent to nearly 15 percent among men (a 27 percent increase).

Over the same period, the desire for a one-child family rose from below 9 percent among both genders to around 12 percent for women and 11 percent for men, while the desire for three or more children declined overall.

Nearly every financial consideration related to childbearing has risen in importance since 2005, with job security and childcare costs at the forefront.

Rising anxiety about childcare expenses reflects their escalation as a key household cost, driven by longer working hours and the growing prevalence of dual-income families.

Between 2002 and 2023, the proportion of families using paid childcare increased from 42 percent to 56 percent, and the number of paid hours rose by 7.7 hours per week. Over the same period, median childcare expenditure jumped from $72 to $171 per week—a 137.5 percent rise.

The burden was greatest for working-class families: Between 2002 and 2022, childcare spending rose by 51.3 percent for the lowest-income earners, compared with 41.9 percent for middle earners and 22.2 percent for the top third. Including unpaid care, the total use of childcare grew by 11 percent in the decade to 2023, with 29 percent of families relying on grandparental care, the highest level since the survey began tracking it in 2004.

Older Australians are playing an increasing role in the informal care network for children, despite several factors contributing to the deterioration of their own living conditions and capacity to provide this support.

For one thing, the long-term trend of Australians having children later in life means that grandparents are, on average, more elderly. HILDA reports that “at a given age, fewer people are already grandparents in the more recent period than in the earlier period.” In 2007 and 2011, around 2 percent of 40-year-olds were grandparents, compared to just 0.5 percent in 2019 and 2023. Among 50-year-olds, the figure fell from 19 percent to 15 percent, and among 60-year-olds, from 60 percent to 43 percent.

At the same time, older workers are delaying retirement because they cannot afford to leave the workforce. For those aged 55–59, the retirement rate has fallen from 40 percent of women and 23 percent of men in 2003 to 14.5 percent and 12.3 percent, respectively, in 2023. The steepest declines occurred among those aged 60–64, dropping from 69.5 percent of women and 48.5 percent of men to 40.8 percent and 27.4 percent.

Between 2003 and 2023, the mean retirement age rose from 58.8 to 63.6 years for women and from 59.9 to 64.8 for men. The report attributes this to “financial necessity, improved health, changing social expectations, and policy reforms such as the increase in the Age Pension eligibility age.”

But the HILDA survey’s own findings challenge the claim that improved health is a major factor: Across the entire research period, average bodily pain increased, particularly among older age groups.

Between 2001 and 2023, average pain scores for males rose by 5.1 percent and for females by 11.6 percent. Reported pain increased with age, accelerating in those older than 40. The lowest levels were among respondents aged 15 to 24, whose pain scores increased from 16.7 to 20.4 points out of 100, between 2001 and 2023. Those aged 65 and over recorded the highest pain scores, rising from 38 points in 2001 to 39.8 in 2023.

Alongside physical pain, psychological distress also worsened—particularly among those aged 15–44. Between 2013 and 2023, distress increased by 55.1 percent for males and 46.3 percent for females.

Since 2011, the proportion of 15–24-year-olds experiencing distress has more than doubled, from 18.4 percent to 37.6 percent in 2023. The report further noted “that a greater proportion of individuals are at high risk of developing serious mental illness.”

Taken together, the data paint a bleak picture of family and social life. High living costs are discouraging childbearing; parents who do have children must work longer hours and spend less time with them, while childcare costs climb beyond reach. Many turn to grandparents for help—yet grandparents are increasingly older, less healthy, and often still working out of financial necessity.

Successive governments—Labor and Liberal-National alike—have overseen this decades-long decline, deepening it through relentless austerity. The current Labor government has overseen the largest decline in working-class living standards since the end of the Second World War.

Across the states, Labor governments have imposed real pay cuts on public sector workers through wage caps and union-brokered enterprise agreements that keep pay rises below inflation. Social spending on health, education, and welfare has been cut by billions in real terms since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took office.

These measures are not accidental, they are part of a conscious program to extract ever-greater profits from the working class amid a descent into global imperialist conflict.

The trade union bureaucracies, fully integrated into the state and corporate apparatus, help enforce this agenda—suppressing strikes, imposing sub-inflationary agreements, and stifling opposition within the working class.

Noboa unleashes murderous repression against mass protests in Ecuador

Cesar Uco

Demonstrators in Cuenca, September 16 [Photo by Martin Vasco / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Military-backed police have killed at least three protesters over the past week in Ecuador, the first fatalities in a nationwide general strike that began on September 22 and is now in its fourth week with no signs of resolution.

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE, in Spanish) is one of the organizations that called the strike in protest against a significant increase in fuel prices, rising inflation, power outages and violence from drug trafficking gangs. It issued a statement denouncing the government for having “turned our communities into war zones, using tear gas, bullets, and indiscriminate violence against a people exercising their constitutional right to protest.”

After unleashing lethal violence against protesters in the northern highlands canton of Otavalo, Ecuador’s right-wing government of President Daniel Noboa claimed Thursday to have reached an agreement with local indigenous leaders to end the strike. This was denied by CONAIE as well as by Otavalo’s mayor, who said the strike was continuing against high fuel prices and other national issues. Officials admitted that protesters continue to blockade roads in at least four provinces.

The government has justified its intensification of repression based on an incident that occurred on October 7, when a convoy carrying President Noboa to Cañar came under attack from protesters.

Initial media reports parroted government allegations, calling it a “shooting”; however, the official version rapidly fell apart.

Over 500 protesters surrounded the convoy, and some threw stones. Seven vehicles were damaged, four security officials were injured and five people detained and subsequently released. Noboa himself was unscathed.

The government claimed without providing evidence that the president’s vehicle had been struck with bullets, and that the attack was an “attempted magnicide.”

Daniel Noboa getting out of vehicle allegedly hit by gunfire [Photo: Presidencia Ecuador]

According to video and photo evidence analyzed by BBC Verify Lupa Media, none include sounds or images consistent with gunfire. Finally, a police report cited by El Mercurio concluded that there was “no ballistic evidence” that the president’s convoy had come under fire.

This has not stopped the government from using the event to tighten repression. It declared a state of emergency, expanding troop deployments and suspending democratic rights in 10 provinces, with Noboa branding participants in overwhelmingly peaceful protests as “terrorists.”

In addition to the three dead, military repression has left dozens injured and 120 arrested.

Foreign governments, whether nominally “left” or openly right-wing, expressed their complete support for Noboa’s maneuver, making clear that they are all aligned when it comes to crushing opposition from below.

Through its embassy in Quito, the Trump administration denounced the attack on Noboa: “The United States condemns the attack on President Daniel Noboa’s motorcade. We stand with Ecuador as authorities investigate and ensure accountability, and stand against all forms of political violence.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, criticized for his support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, hypocritically called for “de-escalation and dialogue” in Ecuador. This isn’t the first instance of reactionary collusion between the UK and Ecuador. In 2019, President Lenín Moreno collaborated in the expulsion of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, leading to his imprisonment and the threat of an espionage trial in the US.

Right-wing and purportedly left-wing governments in Latin America have expressed solidarity with Noboa, deeming recent events “an attack on democracy.”

Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Brazil’s Lula da Silva, representatives of the so-called “Pink Tide,” joined condemnations of the attack, sending a message of support to Noboa.

China, concerned about Noboa’s alignment with Washington, described his stance as “unacceptable” and urged Ecuador to “restore peace and stability.”

Ecuador’s mass protests began last month after the elimination of fuel subsidies. They were called by the United Workers’ Front (FUT) and the National Union of Educators (UNE), with additional support from the indigenous organizations.

A “national shutdown,” or paro, was called by these organizations on September 21 under the demands of restoring the fuel subsidies and lowering of the regressive value-added tax back from 15 percent to 12 percent.

The unrest in Ecuador is part of a broader trend in Latin America of resistance to the aggressive social austerity policies and attacks on democratic rights by far-right leaders, including Noboa, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Javier Milei in Argentina and the right-wing government now headed by José Jerí in Peru.

Significantly, even as the security forces were killing protesters in Ecuador, in neighboring Peru, a plainclothes agent of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) shot and killed 32-year-old Eduardo Ruiz Sanz Wednesday during a march by students, transport workers and civil organizations against Jerí, who was installed by the right-wing Congress after it ousted Peru’s hated and unelected president Dina Boluarte, and against the Congress itself. The government has indicated it will exploit the violence for which it itself is responsible to impose a state of emergency and concentrate power in a presidential dictatorship.

In Ecuador, Noboa comes from one of the country’s richest families. During his campaign for reelection earlier this year, he found himself trailing his rival, the Correista candidate Luisa González (a supporter of the “center-left” nationalist former president Rafael Correa), by several percentage points in the polls (. In response, he decided to travel to Washington D.C. to meet with Donald Trump, reaching an agreement to use the issue of drug trafficking as a pretext for US military deployments in Ecuador and other countries.

However, the underlying reason of such deployments would be to lay US claim to Latin America’s resources and to suppress the emerging mass movement, which appears to be gaining momentum, posing a significant threat to the capitalist order.

Since Noboa began his second term, amid opposition charges of electoral fraud, the value-added tax (VAT) increased from 12 percent to 15 percent between March and April 2024. A gallon of gasoline rose from US$2.40 to US$2.465 in May of this year and reached US$2.751 in August. Premium gasoline, with the VAT increase, rose from US$3.89 to US$3.99 per gallon. In April 2024, automotive diesel increased to US$1.80 per gallon, and with the elimination of subsidies in September 2025, the price rose to US$2.80.

Since 2023, the economic crisis has worsened, marked by reduced foreign investment, business closures, high food inflation, and increasing informal employment. As the World Bank reported:

Economic activity experienced a contraction of approximately 2 percent in 2024, amidst an environment marked by energy shortages, high levels of violence, and political uncertainty. The worst drought in 60 years caused nationwide blackouts and power rationing.

Major cities in Ecuador, particularly Guayaquil and Quito, have seen a surge in homicides. According to El Universo, intentional homicides reached 4,619 between January and June, a 47 percent increase over the same period in 2024.

The high body count is driven largely by violent competition between criminal organizations. Ecuador is a major hub for narcotics trafficking, which is largely ignored as the Trump administration directs military aggression against Venezuela, which accounts for a minuscule share of drugs bound for the US.

The Ecuadorian people have faced numerous crises over the past 25 years, starting with the 1999 “bank holiday” crisis, which led to a financial collapse, a 7.3 percent GDP drop, widespread poverty, and mass migration to countries like the United States. According to a study by the University of Buenos Aires:

On January 9, 2000, Ecuador officially adopted the US dollar as its currency in an attempt to stabilize an economy plagued by rampant inflation, which at the time reached 96.6 percent.

The study indicates that Ecuador’s adoption of the dollar as its national currency has effectively made it a colony of US imperialism.

In 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) insisted on eliminating subsidies, causing fuel prices to soar by 120 percent. This led to violent protests and increased societal polarization, a situation worsened by the pandemic, which heightened unemployment and poverty.

Ecuador is now facing an energy crisis due to droughts affecting hydroelectric plants, resulting in daily power outages of about eight hours.

The Amazonian indigenous population is particularly affected, facing economic challenges such as high transportation costs and limited access to essential services. In Orellana province, poverty has soared by 76.2 percent, with adequate employment rates at only 11 percent. Bolívar province in the Andes has a poverty rate of around 40.7 percent, with permanent employment of about 20 percent.

Noboa, who personifies the subordination of the Ecuadorian ruling class to US imperialism, is in talks with Trump ally Erik Prince, the billionaire mercenary recruiter, to develop specialized repressive forces. Quito is also discussing with the Pentagon the reopening of the Manta military base, and is exploring the possibility of establishing a new base in the Galapagos Islands, a significant wildlife sanctuary whose unique species were observed by Charles Darwin during an 1835 visit, contributing to his theory of evolution.

However, all factions of the capitalist class, including the Correistas, have repeatedly kowtowed to Wall Street and have their own record of repressing working class and indigenous protests.

Meanwhile, organizations like the FUT, UNE and CONAIE seek reforms through the bankrupt strategy of pressuring the government and have repeatedly sold out mass protest movements.

Madagascar president Rajoelina flees with French aid amid mass Gen Z protest

Kumaran Ira

"Gen Z" Madagascar supporters wave the skull and crossbones flag during a gathering at May 13 Square in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. [AP Photo/Brian Inganga]

On October 14, 2025, President Andry Rajoelina was toppled following a massive popular mobilization and subsequent military intervention. Facing “Gen Z” protests that began in late September, Rajoelina was removed by a vote in the National Assembly, while the military unit CAPSAT declared it was “taking power” in front of the presidential palace in Antananarivo.

Colonel Michael Randrianirina, the head of CAPSAT, announced the dissolution of the Senate and the High Constitutional Court, while maintaining the National Assembly’s operations. He declared the formation of a military committee to oversee the transitional presidency pending the establishment of a civilian government. Significantly, CAPSAT backed Rajoelina during his rise to power in 2009. Its alignment this time with the protesters signals deep fractures within the Malagasy bourgeois state and establishment.

According to multiple sources, Andry Rajoelina fled Madagascar on October 12 aboard a French aircraft, in an operation coordinated with Paris and approved by President Emmanuel Macron. The company whose jet transported Rajoelina out of Madagascar, TOA Aviation, was the same that helped Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn extralegally flee prosecution in Japan. This exfiltration reveals France’s active role in safeguarding its strategic interests in a former colony where its economic and military presence remains strong. Rajoelina is reportedly now in living in a wealthy district of Dubai.

Macron emphasized the need to preserve “constitutional order,” without ever condemning the repression or the role of the Malagasy army. The complicit silence of the former colonial power underscores the imperialist nature of its intervention, aimed solely at protecting the interests of international capital.

This military overthrow follows several weeks of mass popular protests, initiated by a Gen Z collective that crystallized the anger of Malagasy youth around demands like an end to water and electricity cuts, fighting corruption, improved living conditions, and the president’s resignation. The movement quickly expanded, gaining support from union confederations, civil servants and demonstrators of all ages.

The regime’s response was brutal: live ammunition, tear gas, mass arrests. According to the UN, at least 22 people have been killed and over a hundred injured since the protests began.

The government’s militarization, marked by the appointment of General Zafisambo as Prime Minister on October 6, only deepened the crisis. Confronted with a population where over 75 percent live below the poverty line on less than €0.80 per day, the regime failed to address social demands, opting instead for repression.

The protest quickly moved beyond youth alone. The Malagasy Trade Union Solidarity collective, comprising around fifty unions, called for a general strike starting October 1, demanding Rajoelina’s resignation and a wage increase after a freeze since 2022. The teachers’ union SEMPAMA denounced the lack of educational resources and joined the mobilization.

Yet their role reflects the limits of trade unionism—in Madagascar and globally. While verbally supporting the social explosion, they also call on the Church and local elites for “dialogue,” aiming to prevent any revolutionary movement. Their orientation remains one of institutional compromise, which fails to address the structural roots of poverty—capitalism—and the need for independent revolutionary organization of the working class.

Several opposition parties, including Tiako i Madagasikara (TIM) and Malagasy Miara-Miainga (MMM), have tried to position themselves as alternatives to Rajoelina’s regime. But their role remains essentially opportunistic: channeling popular anger into the narrow framework of institutional negotiations while safeguarding the foundations of capitalism.

While the mass mobilization advances social demands that can only be met through a struggle for workers’ power and socialism, the army’s intervention aims to defend bourgeois order and preserve the interests of imperialism and the national bourgeoisie.

Bitter experience shows that military interventions in popular uprisings do not aim to fulfill the aspirations of the masses. In Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, the supposed neutrality or support of the army served to defuse mobilization, restore bourgeois order, and ensure the continuity of the capitalist system under a new facade.

The betrayal of workers’ struggles by unions and pseudo-left parties enabled the bourgeoisie to regain political control. In Egypt, this capitulation paved the way for the return of military dictatorship under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who now rules the country with intensified repression against workers, youth, and all forms of social opposition.

CAPSAT’s intervention—already involved in multiple transitions between anti-democratic regimes in Madagascar—does not represent a fundamentally different class nature. The Malagasy military regime, backed by imperialist powers, especially France, will use every tool at its disposal—repression, propaganda, co-optation—to crush opposition among youth and workers.

France’s logistical support for Rajoelina’s exfiltration illustrates its continuing imperialist role within Madagascar. Concerned with protecting its strategic interests in Malagasy energy, telecoms, and rare earths, it does not seek to defend democracy, but to stabilize a regime capable of containing and suppressing social revolts.

The Malagasy uprising is part of a global wave of worker and student mobilizations against deteriorating social conditions, the rise of authoritarian regimes and the deepening capitalist crisis. Gen Z movements in Morocco, mass strikes in Peru, workers’ struggles in Europe, and mobilizations across Africa all reflect a profound, growing rejection of austerity, militarism and the established social order.

But without revolutionary socialist leadership, spontaneous movements—no matter how massive—will be diverted, repressed or drowned in institutional compromise. The Gen Z collective, despite its mobilizing strength, lacks clear political orientation. If the working class does not organize independently, on a socialist and internationalist basis, the military regime will ultimately impose a new form of dictatorship defending the interests of capital.

This social explosion can only be understood within the context of the global capitalist crisis: persistent inflation, massive debt, imperialist wars and worsening inequality. In Madagascar as elsewhere, the national bourgeoisie—closely tied to international capital—is incapable of fulfilling the democratic and social aspirations of the masses.