The unequal costs that created a divided Sydney

1 week ago 7

Editorial

November 30, 2025 — 2.45pm

It will astonish few that the Great Sydney divide creates unequal opportunities, but new research captures the weight of the burden carried by western Sydney residents.

Data from the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research shows the economic divides remain as stark as ever with wealth, not geography, the new legend to the map of Sydneysiders’ daily lives.

Residents of some western Sydney LGAs spend about 25 per cent of their incomes on housing.

The think tank research splits our city into four distinct economic zones: the uber wealthy, the great incomes, middle Sydney and those on lower incomes. It reveals deep inequity, with some less well-heeled western Sydney LGAs paying far higher percentages of their incomes on necessities such as food, housing and utilities than the inner city, leafy north and beachside suburbs in the east.

The largest discrepancies across the city were in the cost of housing. Three of the hardest hit LGAs were Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Cumberland, with net household average annual incomes of $105,000 but where residents spend about 25 per cent of that on housing. Meanwhile, residents in areas such as Mosman, Woollahra and Waverley, where average incomes top $400,000, spend an average 17 per cent of their incomes on housing.

Middle Sydney households, the demographic that reflects how most of Sydney lives, have annual incomes of $150,000 to $200,000 and spend about 17.5 per cent of that on housing.

The wealth divide also determines how much people can save for rainy days or nest eggs: the very wealthy and the very well-off save nearly 19 per cent of their incomes, middle Sydney banks about 15 per cent while people with the lowest average incomes could save only 10 per cent a year.

Some cannot even manage that. For instance, Cumberland, Fairfield and Canterbury-Bankstown residents only manage to bank 3.97 per cent, 4.60 per cent and 5.42 per cent of their incomes, the lowest annual savings across Sydney.

Paradoxically, those on the lowest incomes are also spending more of their earnings on other necessities. They spend 8.35 per cent on food, 5.38 per cent on health and 9.98 per cent on transport, while the rest of the city averaged 7.88 per cent, 5.04 per cent and 9.49 per cent respectively on the same costs of living.

Such discrepancies mean that while Sydney’s wealth and prosperity is chained to the housing market, the people of western Sydney suffer the cost-of-living crisis more than the rest of the city, with bills and payments eating far deeper into their more smaller incomes.

They are also hampered by tacit barriers that further restrain prosperity. Neil Perry, the chief economist at the Centre for Western Sydney, told this masthead that access to well-paid jobs was an obvious way to lift incomes, but residents did not get the same opportunities as people in the east because they lacked the same insider connections. “So their skills aren’t recognised or aren’t valued as much,” he said.

Such attitudes are indeed challenging, but the region has an ace to play. Population growth will deliver unprecedented political clout and force future governments to reform a system that victimises western Sydney.

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