Sydney, Australia – When Racheal Clayton attended number one school in Sydney, Australia, at the height of the 2007-2009 global monetary crisis, the Australian economy the preference for governments around the world.

Unlike all other primary evolved economies, Australia emerged from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression entered a recession.

Today, Clayton, 22, is navigating the world of work instead of the classroom, and an economy whose star is shining much less brightly on the international stage.

Far from being the envy of the evolved world, Australia’s economy is developing at its slowest speed since the early 1990s, excluding COVID-19 pandemic and delaying many of their peers.

Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by just 0.8 percent year-on-year during the first three quarters of 2024, compared with expansions of 3.1 percent and 1 percent in the United States and the European Union, respectively.

If it were not for the expansion of the population promoted by immigration, Australia would be in recession since according to the expansion of capita it has been negative during seven consecutive quarters.

Like many of his classmates, Clayton, a university graduate in 2022, is pessimistic about the country’s economy.

Even if you have a full -time task in public relations and lives in the house with your parents, she took a component concert as a non -public coach to cover her expenses, especially food, invoices, invoices, invoices, invoices, safe invoices and position of Run a car.

“I am very privileged to still live at home. So it’s not like I have to pay rent, but I still have to pay for other things in life,” Clayton told Al Jazeera.

“If I take a little break from my part -time work, myself in trouble,” he said.

Like many countries, Australia costs have increased following COVID-19, with a 7. 8% inflation reach in December 2022, while wages have stagnated.

While OECD wages are higher on average at 1. 5% since 2019, Australia’s genuine wages still had a 4. 8% decline than pre-call grades from last year, to OECD data.

Clayton said he had high expectations of having a space because it’s hard to save cash and assets are so unaffordable in Australia, one of the world’s top beloved markets.

“I [my generations] focus on the search for security through other means,” he said.

“It’s only [financially] secure, it’s like an option, so you can use your money as well. “

After emerging from the recession in 1992, Australia registered 28 consecutive years of uninterrupted economic expansion to the world coup through Covid in 2020.

Since it has been limited to the pandemic, the economy has fought to take off in the midst of higher interest rates, flacure productivity and deceleration in the Australian export required by iron mineral.

Even if Australia is not officially in recession, it feels little different from one for those struggling to pay their bills despite having a full-time job and a decent income.

Before Christmas, a survey through the Salvation Army Australia found that one in 4 Australians were involved that their young people would miss out on presents and 12% were worried that their young people would miss out on food.

Much of the monetary tension caused through higher loan invoices caused through successive interest rates increases through the Australian Bank (RBA).

After reducing the reference speed to about 0 in pandemic reaction, the RBA increased the rate to 4. 35% in a series of movements destined to learn inflation.

In September, Treasurer Jim Chalmers pointed to the top-interest rate environment as a primary cause of the slowdown, saying the hikes were “breaking the economy. “

Matt Grudnoff, chief tank economist at the Australian Institute, said the RBA had played “an important role” in the country’s existing economic woes.

“We know that consumer spending is particularly low in Australia at the moment, and that makes up more than half of GDP. And so you know, while consumers in Australia aren’t spending, the economy is going to grow very, very slowly,” Grudnoff told Al Jazeera.

Grudnoff said that the shortage of existing housing source contributes to the difficulties that many Australians face.

Australia is expected to face a deficit of 106,300 population until 2027, to a report through the National Corporation of Finance and Housing Investment (NHFIC).

Grudnoff said that scarcity, which is interacting for the rise of costs and assets of assets, has been a factor for years but has gained national attention following the pandemic.

“I think it’s just because we didn’t have higher inflation [before],” Grudnoff said.

“The truth is, until you have a crisis, it’s easy to forget about the problems,” he added.

With a federal election looming next year, politicians from either primary party have migration cutting back as a way to ease cost-of-living pressures.

Faced with a shortage of primary hard work after the pandemic, Australia eased its hurdles to foreign academics and skilled migrants in 2022, leading to a record net migration of 547,200 arrivals the following year.

Facing growing pressure over housing and strained infrastructure, the Labor Party government in 2023 announced it would slash the intake of permanent migrants to pre-pandemic levels and the following year proposed a cap on international student arrivals.

While the government estimates net migration for the 2024-2025 financial year to come in at 340,000 – about 200,000 fewer than in 2023 – that would still be 80,000 more than its target.

Trent Wiltshire, deputy director of the Grattan Institute’s economic prosperity and democracy program, said migration is a boon to the economy and not the cause of its underlying weaknesses.

“Our consistent with Capita’s living standards recently regressed and has been stagnant for some time now. So it was also a pre-firing problem, the fact that our economy didn’t have paints as well as it should. So we want the reforms to get better productivity to start getting our living standards out,” Wiltshire said.

“This is not the cause of weakness,” Wiltshire added, referring to the effect of migration in the expansion of expansion. “It is a vital difference of doing. “

In last December, the Labor Government published its average economic perspective, predicting the expansion of GDP of 1. 75% and a deficit of $ 26. 9 billion in 2024-25, the first since it came to force in 2022.

Nicki Hutley, an independent economist, said that many of Australia’s problems stem from a lack of productivity growth and a “robust and intelligent discussion on taxes and revenues”.

Hutley said that the successive of governments for spending and investment has sat down the basis of the existing weakness of the economy.

While other countries had used pandemic as an opportunity to make investments in long -term expansion engines, such as green energy, Australia had spent effective without any long -term sense of vision, he said.

“We spent money on building houses that would have been built anyway. We didn’t do it, we didn’t use that income wisely, and now we’re back exactly where we started,” Hutley told Al Jazeera. “And ultimately, Australia is a small, open economy that’s reliant on other countries like China. We need to diversify more.”

“And I think that’s the lesson that every country has already taken after COVID, [which] is diversification of your imports and export markets,” she added.

“But also that you will have to make sure the investment and have the right executives to do so. “