If you’ve spent any time recently listening to a Gen Z relative complain about the price of a flat, you might have rolled your eyes. New analysis suggests you probably shouldn’t have.
Research conducted for the BBC shows that people in their twenties right now are facing a harder start to adult life than any generation in nearly fifty years. That’s not a feeling, not a vibe. It’s the data.
The numbers paint a grim picture. Home ownership among 25-to-34-year-olds has collapsed from over 50% in the late 1980s to around 35% today. Average house prices have risen to roughly nine times the typical annual salary, compared to about four times in the early 2000s. For anyone trying to scrape together a deposit while paying London rents, the maths simply doesn’t work.
It doesn’t stop at housing. Graduate starting salaries, adjusted for inflation, have barely moved in a decade. Meanwhile, the cost of everything from groceries to energy bills has surged. Student debt, which didn’t exist in its current form before 1998, now routinely tops £40,000 before a young person has earned their first proper paycheque.
“We did everything we were told to do. Got the degrees, moved to the cities, took the internships. And we’re still nowhere near where our parents were at our age.”
That sentiment, shared by a 27-year-old marketing worker in Manchester, isn’t unusual. It’s practically the defining mood of a generation that came of age through a financial crash, a pandemic, and a cost-of-living crisis, all before turning thirty.
The analysis also flags the labour market. Young workers are more likely to be in insecure, zero-hours or gig economy roles than their predecessors were. Pension contributions start later, if at all, which compounds the disadvantage over a lifetime.
None of this means older generations had it easy. But the evidence does challenge the lazy narrative that twenty-somethings are simply too fussy, too avocado-toast-obsessed to get on the property ladder.
The real question now is whether any of this will actually change policy, or whether today’s young adults will still be having this same conversation when they’re fifty.
