Essential workers are being priced out of Australia’s private rental market as affordability plummets, new research shows. Source: ABC News.
Anglicare’s annual Rental Affordability Snapshot has revealed key occupations, including retail workers, social workers and cleaners, can afford fewer than 1 per cent of rental listings.
Other essential jobs, such as nursing and teaching, are not faring much better, with just 1.1 and 3.3 per cent of listings deemed affordable, respectively.
The Anglicare report surveyed 48,776 rental listings across Australia, measuring each property against the full-time minimum wage for workers in 16 essential occupations.
Of the jobs included in the research, only three saw an increase in affordability compared to 2025, while the other 13 either decreased or remained stagnant.
For a hospitality worker in the Northern Territory, there are no affordable rentals available. Elsewhere, only 338 listings remained.
Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers said wage growth had not kept up with rent increases in recent years.
Data from real estate analyst Cotality showed unit rents have increased by 44.3 per cent in the last five years, while house rents have gone up by 36.6 per cent.
Ms Chambers said wages have increased by less than half that rate in the same period.
“For those who are paying in the private rental market, sadly, most of that increase has just been swallowed up by rents.”
Ms Chambers said the growing disparity between wages and rental affordability was due to an over-reliance on the private market to deliver housing.
“Over the last 40 years in Australia, consecutive governments have stopped building and funding housing,” she said.
“We don’t necessarily need to build more houses, but what we need to do is build more social housing or shift some pre-existing housing into social housing.
A spokesperson for Minister for Housing and Homelessness Clare O’Neil said the Albanese Government is “building 55,000 social and affordable homes, with more than 8000 already complete,” she said.
FULL STORY
Essential workers struggle to afford vast majority of rental listings, report reveals (By Emma Johnson, ABC News)
