The future of Australian property prices

Smurf1976 said:

I was working as an employee electrician for a period in the 1990's.

Just over $14 per hour and that was a "normal" wage at the time and one the unions weren't complaining much about. Drive your own car to work and any form of paid overtime was highly unusual.

Late-1990's and through the 00's there was a huge boom in incomes in the trades and last I knew (a couple of years ago) the same employer paid just under $43 per hour for the exact same job, indeed some of the same people are still there doing it. Company car provided and with overtime you'd easily take the income to $110k a year.

Professional and other non-trades salaries with the same employer didn't increase to anywhere near the same extent in % terms over that period, something that upset a few of those who progressed to administrative, professional or management roles.

Last time I sawed any concrete I was paid $88 per hour working weekends. Almost certainly they could have found someone cheaper - but I was 100% reliable at turning up.

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over9k said:

Ah yes, because grad jobs have been SO plentiful since the GFC.

Look man you are just completely out of touch. Completely. I know people with masters degrees still bagging groceries. I know one guy with a PhD that's still driving a forklift in a warehouse.


Here's a hilarious data point to follow up on my previous post:

Bachelor degree enrolments are down, they peaked in 2010-2011. But postgraduate degree enrolments are actually up. Why? Because the entire generation that were at uni in 2010-2011 have had to either write the study off entirely or go & get a postgraduate degree to actually be competitive in the workplace. We've all realised that we now need a masters to get what a bachelor's used to. It's just a very simple time lag.

It, too, will pass.

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moXJO said:

My good mate went to uni. Bit of a lazy bugger. He went and worked in the US for a while in an unrelated field. Then came back here. Probably about 25 years all in and about 20 years to start making serious money.
Younger gen X.

Anyway he's on $250k- $350k a year. Does bugger all from the looks of it. He literally tells me he does bugger all. Works from home now. He was good at making social contacts.

His pay is only going to increase and realistically could work another 30 years. All the builders and trades I know that are my age (45) have broken bodies and want out.
And that's the difference for the pay scale.

I pushed my son through to year 12 but he is now doing electric trade for his job. Year 12 made it easier for him to ace his tests. Also I believe it has the best chance of employment into the future as its looking like everything is electric. Might push him through uni at a later date.

People simply don't plan their careers or work their marketability and create contacts. Uni never guaranteed a job. It was a lot of sht paying jobs for 20 years until you really start to earn.

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Humid said:

I make more money doing instrumentation tubing

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over9k said:

Ah yes, because grad jobs have been SO plentiful since the GFC.

Look man you are just completely out of touch. Completely. I know people with masters degrees still bagging groceries. I know one guy with a PhD that's still driving a forklift in a warehouse.


Here's a hilarious data point to follow up on my previous post:

Bachelor degree enrolments are down, they peaked in 2010-2011. But postgraduate degree enrolments are actually up. Why? Because the entire generation that were at uni in 2010-2011 have had to either write the study off entirely or go & get a postgraduate degree to actually be competitive in the workplace. We've all realised that we now need a masters to get what a bachelor's used to. It's just a very simple time lag.

It, too, will pass.

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moXJO said:

Isn't that just plumbing for guys that don't want to be elbows deep in sht?

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over9k said:

I suspect housing has increased more than even trade wages have.

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over9k said:

I wonder if even tradie wages have kept up with housing costs over the past few years.

They're certainly going to be a better alternative to uni, but I wonder if a gen Z sparky or whatever will do as well as a gen Y one.

My suspicion is no. I suspect housing has increased more than even trade wages have. But that is pure gut instinct/based on nothing.

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Humid said:

I really cant comprehend how so many educated people havnt figured out that a country that makes nothing pays service trades so much!
With no overseas travel we can fix the house mindset plus iron ore in the west is booming the jobs market here back to boom days through the lack of labour....get on board

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Humid said:

Sparky is best for money but unbelievbly brain dead job and will be forever
Take the money I say

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Smurf1976 said:

Trades wages (same job, same employer) about 200% increase over past 25 years. That's based on information now a couple of years old but assuming they'd have added a few % since then.

House price in same location (Hobart) just under 400% increase over the same time from a quick Google search.

I'm in SA now and not really familiar with the economic history of anything here so can't comment locally at present.

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greggles said:

It sounds like you're angry that your degree didn't lead to the kind of job you were hoping it would. To be fair, that's your mistake.

You're only 35, you can retrain. If I could have my time over, I'd do the same and focus on IT instead of what I ended up doing.

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Joe Blow said:

We're off property and onto careers and employment. It would be nice to get this thread back on topic. If we can't I may have to split this discussion off and create a new thread.

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over9k said:

Look man you are just completely out of touch. Completely. I know people with masters degrees still bagging groceries. I know one guy with a PhD that's still driving a forklift in a warehouse.

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moXJO said:

It's worse for him as its mainly electronics. He already hates his life. 2 more years of tafe and 1 more year with the boss. He is killing it at the moment though.

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Smurf1976 said:

It's a consequence of Australia's increasingly narrow economic base.

Mining and service industries creates a pretty narrow range of employment and in practice most end up in fairly low end service jobs. Go to any Third World country and there are countless such people you'll encounter even just as a tourist.

In contrast manufacturing requires not just assembly workers and so on (but of course that's a perfectly reasonable job for someone - imperfect but it sure beats being on the dole) but it creates employment for all sorts of people from non-technical product design to engineering to science to logistics to accounting. There's far more of all those needed to make something from scratch than there are to just unpack shipping containers sent from somewhere overseas.

Trouble is, getting people to join the dots and grasp that it's all interconnected. An economy based on financial bubbles, digging holes in the ground and with most of the rest in low end services is an economy that isn't going to work too well for most people. One symptom of that is unaffordable housing but that's a symptom not the disease.

Trying to bring the thread back on topic, what happens next with housing is the question and suffice to say the recent price action looks very much like a blow off top to me in the absence of any real fundamentals to underpin it.

With migration drying up with COVID restrictions and the associated things like overseas students and tourists not requiring accommodation, where's this sudden need for housing coming from?

The whole thing looks extremely speculative to me and something that isn't sustainable.

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over9k said:

This problem is not unique to australia though, is it?

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