Sydney Residents Need $100,000 To Live Comfortably

Almost half the residents of Sydney, Australia believe you must have a six figure income to deal withliving costs in Sydney. This came out in a poll taken by the Sydney Business Chamber with 47% of the respondents replying that it would take at least $100,000 or more per year to live in Sydney. Although that is what the Sydney Business Chamber found in its poll, only about 15% of Sydney’s current residents can boast of having a $100,000 or more income.

As the Daily Telegraph of Sydney observed, the 15% figure is nearly double that of the rest of Australia. The Australian Taxation Office found that only 6% of the people in Australia have taxable incomes of $100,000 or more. Looking at the surface of the figures, it would seem that 85% of the residents in Sydney are surviving against impossible odds. It would also seem that people would not be interested in moving to Sydney with 94% unprepared for living costs in Sydney. Yet Sydney continues to grow.

Patricia Forsythe, executive director of the Sydney Business Chamber attempted to refute the results. She stated that “People that don’t do well are often in the public sector where it doesn’t matter if you’re in Wagga Wagga, Gurlagambone or Sydney – if you are a first year teacher you earn the same”.

There may be some truth to this point of view as far as earnings are concerned. First year teachers do make the same regardless of whether they live in Wagga Wagga, Gurlagambone or Sydney. Surely many others in the public sector also earn the same as they would in Sydney. But it’s also true that the same income would go a long way toward paying off expenses in Gurlagambone than in Sydney.

It would seem that people employed in the public sector might veto the idea of living in Sydney even though Sydney certainly offers many advantages that smaller cities do not have. It may be better to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than a minnow in the big sea of Sydney.

Sadly, if this should come about, the people of Sydney would suffer with classrooms being empty because of teacher shortages and people having long waiting lines at public offices to be served. Hopefully it will not come to that, and perhaps on the next poll on living costs in Sydney there will be a more favourable outcome.