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The last few years of Mitch Evans's life have not been easy.
Key points:
- Most young Australians experienced financial difficulties at some point in the last year, a new report shows
- Half the young people surveyed said they had gone without food for a day because they had no money
- The report also found mental health issues were rife among younger people
When COVID lockdowns hit in 2020, the 22-year-old was forced to move back to the La Trobe Valley in country Victoria to live with his parents.
"I didn't get any JobKeeper in that first round, so I couldn't afford my rent," he said.
"To give that up and go back home at the age of 20 when I'd had a year-and-a-half of that freedom was really, really difficult."
Monash University's latest Australian Youth Barometer report shows for many young people, things haven't got easier since normal life resumed post-pandemic.
The 2022 report, which surveyed 18–24-year-olds from around the country, found 90 per cent of young Australians experienced financial difficulties at some point during the last 12 months.
In fact, half of those surveyed had gone without eating for a whole day because they had no money.
Researcher Lucas Walsh said the report highlighted that the unique pressures facing this generation went beyond the financial insecurity normally experienced by young people.
"We see this constellation of factors like housing affordability, rental prices going up, our cost of living increasing and we can assume that these are having flow-on effects," Professor Walsh said.
"It's a combination of factors related to the current economic circumstances, the pandemic and longer-term trends in terms of cost of living."
Mental health issues rife
Professor Walsh said COVID-19 had also caused many young people to miss out on social rites of passage, which had in turn affected their mental health.
The report found mental health issues were rife among younger people, with 85 per cent having feelings of worry, anxiety or pessimism.
Almost one-quarter rated their mental health as poor or very poor.
Professor Walsh said the data represented "a large increase in mental health issues", even as the federal government was "reducing support for mental health".
This week, the Albanese government announced it would halve the number of Medicare-subsidised psychologist visits available to Australians from 20 per year during the pandemic back to 10.
Young people 'denied a future'
Professor Walsh said young people felt they were "being denied a future, when we look at wider factors such as housing and affordability and rising cost of living."
"We must not let these young people who have gone through the pandemic become a forgotten generation," he said.
Mitch Evans, who has bipolar disorder, anxiety and ADHD, believes he will be financially worse off than his parents. That's a belief held by more than half of respondents.
He despairs of the future.
"I feel like our generation is having to work a lot harder than previous generations, and that does really take a toll on you," he said.
"We just kind of feel like the way society and the economy is run is not to benefit us, it's to benefit the same people that it was designed to benefit 50 years ago."
Micro-credentials on the rise
The survey showed the nature of how young people studied was also changing, with just a fifth of university students studying face-to-face full time.
Mr Evans was typical of those surveyed in his decision to reduce his university hours to study a brief early childhood education qualification at TAFE.
"I decided to go to TAFE because I wanted to do something genuine and real, I guess, and didn't have many options available to me at that stage," he said.
The survey found nearly 60 per cent of young people hold or have enrolled in "a micro-credential, micro-degree or micro-masters".
Those qualifications are short qualifications that one typically uses to upskill within a specific area, for example a computer coding course, or a course in Microsoft Excel.
Professor Walsh said while more research was needed, "wider workforce pressures" to constantly upgrade qualifications throughout people's lifetimes could be feeding into the trend.
Generation resilience
Professor Walsh said despite everything they faced, Generation Z had shown tremendous resilience in the face of adversity.
"They're living in challenging times and they know it," he said.
"They continue to be largely hopeful, so there'll be this cautious mix of optimism, anxiety and pessimism that we see consistently in the research."
Mr Evans said he agreed young people were doing well given the circumstances.
"We need to keep talking about where we're at, how we're going, whether that's financially, mentally, physically, whatever," he said.
"We just need to be open and keep supporting each other because that's the only way we can change things and keep going."