leesa

Few people can afford to repay a mortgage with the wage they earn out of highschool/university. Back then you could buy a house, have kids, support a partner and live comfortably on the first job you got, so there wasn't a lot of need to seek other opportunities. Why would they want to leave? The factory job was enough to have all their needs met, they had a good life and so could stay in that one job for 20 years.

That kind of life doesn't exist today. You can't get a job out of highschool and have it meet your financial needs for the next 20 years of your life. Instead, people need to keep improving their skills and constantly chase salary increases or new jobs until it reaches a point where they can afford a mortgage and start a family of their own.

IMPO everything comes back to the cost of a house. Every item or service that you buy in Australia goes back to the labour cost to pay people who themselves ultimately just want to buy a house in this country. If house prices are expensive, everything from hiring an accountant to paying a nanny will reflect that, they're just trying to pay their mortgage too.
For anyone complaining about the cost of goods and services here, nothing will change until housing is a reasonable portion of the average wage again.