Your nan wasn't making it up: the house really did cost four years' pay. A median Sydney house was 4.6 years of the average full-time wage in 1970, it stayed between 3.2 and 5.7 years for the entire 1950–1995 era, and on the ABS's last official reading (December 2021) it cost 14.3 years. Dollars hide that sort of thing. Hours of work can't.
So this page prices 75 years of Australian life the way your payslip experiences it: the front-bar schooner, the loaf, the litre of milk, the tank of petrol and the house, each divided by the wage of its day. "A schooner cost a shilling" tells you nothing. "A schooner cost eleven minutes of your shift" tells you everything. Where we couldn't source a figure to our standard, we left an honest gap rather than a guess — and each section keeps its arithmetic folded away at the end, where workings belong.
Priced in hours, not dollars
Every family has one member who remembers exactly what a schooner cost in their day, and no argument at the table has ever survived contact with them. Fair enough. But the wage was small then too — both ends of the sum have moved, which is how dollar nostalgia fools everyone. Minutes of work don't have that problem. Nobody has ever minted more of an hour.
So the method here is one division, applied 75 years in a row. Take the item's average Sydney retail price — mostly ABS bulletin 6403.0, which the ABS itself calls an "approximate indicator", a caveat we quote rather than bury. Divide by the average hourly wage of the day. For houses, divide the median price by a year of average earnings. That's the whole model. Every figure on this page carries its inputs, and the data page lists every catalogue number.
The wage itself travelled from $18.28 a week in FY 1949–50 to $2,051.10 in November 2025 — 112 times the nominal figure. Whether life got 112 times better is exactly what the rest of this page is for.
THE WORKING — SERIES, HOURS AND POUNDS
"The average wage" is two official series: average weekly earnings per employed male unit to the early 1980s (RBA Occasional Paper 8, Table 4.17), then AWOTE — full-time adult ordinary-time earnings — from Nov 1983 (RBA OP8 Table 4.18; ABS 6302.0 series A85002148L from 2005). Cousins, not twins: the 1981–83 join is a genuine series break, footnoted wherever we cross it.
hourly = weekly ÷ 40 before 1983 (standard week 40 h from 1 Jan 1948) and ÷ 38 after (the 1983 decisions). Pre-decimal money converts at the official changeover rate £1 = $2 (14 Feb 1966) — face value, not purchasing power. For purchasing power, use our inflation calculator or the RBA's pre-decimal calculator.
Your wage vs the decades
Enough theory — try it on your own payslip. Type your wage below and the tool prices today's basket in your minutes, then lets you slide back through the decades to see how you stack up against the average worker of any era. The default is the current average: $2,051.10 a week (AWOTE, November 2025).
* Derived, not measured: the official Sydney retail-price series ended in June 2011, so today's bread and milk are the June 2011 ABS prices scaled by Sydney CPI (see footnote 8 below). † Media-reported, not official statistics: the beer range prices a typical schooner at $8.00–$9.50 (news.com.au, 2023; see footnote 9). Hourly wage assumes a 38-hour week. General information only, not advice.
Two things tend to jump out. Earning the exact average, your loaf of bread costs within a minute of what it cost the average worker in 1970. And your petrol is cheaper in work-minutes than theirs was in 1984 — more on both below. But first, the front bar.
The schooner index: seventy years for nothing
Start in a Sydney front bar, 1952. The pubs shut at six, the beer price is set by the government, and the new schedule is printed in the paper like a stock quote: a fifteen-ounce schooner, one and four. Against the wage of the day, that glass costs the average worker 11 minutes of the shift.
Now the number this page was built to deliver. On media-reported prices, a typical schooner ran $8.00–$9.50 by 2023 — which is 8.9 to 10.6 minutes at today's average wage. Seventy years later, the schooner costs the same slice of your working day it did when the government set the price. Beer, of all things, went precisely nowhere.
The road between wasn't flat, mind. Beer got genuinely cheap through the seventies: by 1979 — the cheapest beer decade on record — the 285 ml public-bar glass was down to 4.9 minutes. It drifted between five and six minutes for the next three decades, and sat at 5.9 when the ABS priced a public-bar glass for the last time in June 2011. Since then there's been no official series at all, only the news pages: premium and inner-city venues at $12.00–$14.20 a schooner (13.3 minutes at $12.00), and the AHA's recommended schooner price at $9.50 in March 2026. Twice-yearly excise indexation, GST from 2000 and the 2026 Lion and Asahi price rises have all pushed the same way.
One label, stated plainly: today's beer figures are media-reported, not official statistics. We'd normally print a dash, but a well-reported range beats a blank — so it ships with the label attached. A dated price board from a named Sydney public bar would turn the range into one hard number; if your local prints its prices, we genuinely want a photo.
Got a price board, or writing about this?
Send us a dated pub price and we’ll credit you when it goes in. Journalists: every figure here is free to use with a link, and we can send the underlying table.
THE WORKING — SCHOONERS, 1952 → TODAY
1952: schooner (15 oz) 1s 4d = $0.133 at £1 = $2 · wage $29.15/wk ÷ 40 h = $0.73/h · 0.133 ÷ 0.73 × 60 = 11.0 min. Middy (10 oz) 1s 1d = $0.108 → 8.9 min. Prices government-controlled — Daily Mirror (Sydney), 31 Oct 1952, Trove 276508944.
1979: 285 ml glass 43c ÷ $5.26/h ($210.28/wk ÷ 40) × 60 = 4.9 min (ABS 6403.0). Jun 2011: $3.42 ÷ $35.00/h ($1,330.10/wk ÷ 38) × 60 = 5.9 min (ABS 6403.0.55.001, final issue).
Today — media-reported, not official statistics: $8.00 ÷ $53.98/h × 60 = 8.9 min · $9.50 → 10.6 min · premium $12.00 → 13.3 min. Wage: AWOTE $2,051.10/wk ÷ 38 (ABS 6302.0, Nov 2025). Prices: news.com.au, 2023 (typical schooner $8.00–$9.50); Nine, 4 Mar 2026 + news.com.au (premium venues $12.00–$14.20); AHA recommended $9.50, Mar 2026. Upgrade path: a dated Sydney price-board capture.
The house story: flat for 45 years, then the cliff
When your nan mentions what she paid for the house, the polite family response has always been that money was different then. Here's the uncomfortable bit: it wasn't, much. From 1950 to 1995, a median Sydney house cost between 3.2 and 5.7 years of the average wage — and not once in 45 years did it leave that band. Booms, busts, credit squeezes, even the 17% mortgage rates of 1990: the band held through the lot.
Then it broke, and the break has a date. In 1995 the ratio sat at 5.7 — inside the old band, and lower than 1990. By 2005 it was 9.5. The doubling of Sydney's house-to-wage ratio took exactly one decade, and everything since has stacked on that step: 11.7 years by 2015, 14.3 at the ABS's final official reading in December 2021, and 14.9 on Cotality's December 2025 median value (an industry figure — the ABS retired its series, so we label the difference rather than blend it).
Put it in today's money. If houses still cost 4.6 years of the average wage, the median would be about $490,000. It's $1.59 million. To feel that gap as a monthly budget rather than a chart, run your income through How Much Can I Borrow?, then price the median with the Repayment Calculator. The distance between those two answers is this chart, personalised.
THE WORKING — HOUSES, YEARS OF WAGES
years = median price ÷ (weekly wage × 52). 1970: $18,700 ÷ ($78.98 × 52) = 4.6 (Abelson & Chung 2006, NSW Valuer-General data · RBA OP8). 1995: $196,750 ÷ ($661.20 × 52) = 5.7. Dec 2021: $1,300,000 ÷ ($1,748.40 × 52) = 14.3 (ABS 6416.0, final release). Dec 2025: $1,587,709 ÷ ($2,051.10 × 52) = 14.9 (Cotality HVI — industry figure, labelled).
Pre-1970 — Stapledon 2007, Table A.15, Sydney nominal medians: 1950 $4,370 → 4.6 yrs · 1955 $5,450 → 3.2 · 1960 $8,720 → 4.1 · 1965 $12,050 → 4.5. Stapledon's 1970 figure ($17,280 → 4.2 yrs) runs a shade under Abelson & Chung's $18,700 — different methodology, so the join is shown, not spliced silently.
The what-if: 4.6 yrs × ($2,051.10 × 52) ≈ $490,000 vs the $1,587,709 Cotality median.
The quiet winners: petrol, milk and the 112× wage
Not everything went the way of the house. Some of the loudest complaints in Australian life turn out, in work-minutes, to be wins nobody threw a party for.
Petrol is cheaper than in 1984
Truly. A litre cost 45.6c in March 1984 and about 180.1c across FY 2024–25 — quadrupled in dollars, which is the version everyone at the servo remembers. In work-minutes it fell from 3.0 to 2.0. A third cheaper. Wages outran the bowser, quietly, while dollars kept score the loud way.
Milk collapsed
The quiet champion. A litre of milk cost the average 1962 worker 9.1 minutes of the shift. By 1990 it was 3.6, and on our derived 2020s figure it's about 2.5. Supermarket price wars did in three decades what no wages board ever managed: they made a staple nearly free in work-time.
The 112× wage
From $18.28 a week in FY 1949–50 to $2,051.10 in November 2025, the average wage multiplied 112 times in nominal dollars — and "112×" means nothing until you divide something by it. Bread held roughly flat in minutes. Milk and petrol got properly cheap. Beer went round in a seventy-year circle. Houses went the other way, hard. And the modern wage carries a claim the 1950 pay packet barely knew: income tax at today's rates and thresholds. To see what $2,051.10 a week actually keeps, run it through the Income Tax Calculator — the bridge between this page's gross figures and your take-home reality.
THE WORKING — PETROL, MILK, BREAD, THE WAGE
petrol: Mar 1984 super 45.6c/L ÷ $9.11/h ($346.00/wk ÷ 38) × 60 = 3.0 min (ABS 6403.0) · FY 2024–25 avg 180.1c/L, five largest cities (ACCC) ÷ $53.98/h × 60 = 2.0 min.
milk: Mar 1962 quart 23d = $0.192 ÷ 1.136 L = $0.169/L ÷ $1.112/h × 60 = 9.1 min (CBCS 6403.0) · Dec 1990 1 L 88c ÷ $14.62/h × 60 = 3.6 min · today (derived, not measured) $3.06 × 1.451 CPI = $4.44/2 L = $2.22/L ÷ $53.98/h × 60 = 2.5 min.
bread: 1970 2 lb loaf 21.0c ÷ $1.97/h × 60 = 6.4 min · today (derived) $3.51 × 1.451 = $5.09 ÷ $53.98/h × 60 = 5.7 min. wage: $2,051.10 ÷ $18.28 = 112.2× nominal (RBA OP8 Table 4.17 · ABS 6302.0 A85002148L).
The full table, for the sceptics and the journalists
The stories above, plus every anchor we didn't narrate — minutes of work at the average wage of the day, per item, wherever a sourced price exists. A dash means no source met our bar; we'd rather show a gap than a guess. Press "show the working" and every cell hands over its inputs.
| Era | Wage /wk | Beer6 | Bread4 | Milk /L5 | Petrol /L7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19521,3 | $29.15 | 8.9 min | —10 | —10 | —10 |
1952: wage $29.15 ÷ 40 h = $0.73/h · middy (10 oz) 1s 1d = $0.108 → 0.108 ÷ 0.73 × 60 = 8.9 min · schooner (15 oz) 1s 4d = $0.133 → 11.0 min · prices government-controlled (Daily Mirror, 31 Oct 1952) | |||||
| Mar 19621,3 | $44.48 | —10 | 8.5 min | 9.1 min | —10 |
Mar 1962: wage $44.48 (FY 1961–62) ÷ 40 = $1.112/h · bread 2 lb 19d = $0.158 → 8.5 min · milk quart 23d = $0.192 ÷ 1.136 L = $0.169/L → 9.1 min (CBCS 6403.0) | |||||
| Dec 19651,3 | $51.73 | —10 | 7.7 min | 8.2 min | —10 |
Dec 1965: wage $51.73 (FY 1964–65) ÷ 40 = $1.293/h · bread 20d = $0.167 → 7.7 min · milk quart 24d = $0.200 ÷ 1.136 L → 8.2 min (CBCS 6403.0) | |||||
| Dec 19701 | $78.98 | —10 | 6.4 min | 6.2 min | —10 |
Dec 1970: wage $78.98 (FY 1970–71) ÷ 40 = $1.97/h · bread 2 lb 21.0c → 6.4 min · milk quart 23.0c ÷ 1.136 L = 20.2c/L → 6.2 min (7.0 min per quart) (ABS 6403.0) | |||||
| Jul 19731,6 | $94.85 | 5.8 min | —10 | —10 | —10 |
Jul 1973: wage $94.85 (FY 1972–73) ÷ 40 = $2.371/h · ACT 10 oz glass 23c → 5.8 min · 15 oz schooner 29c → 7.3 min (Canberra Times, 30 Jul 1973 — ACT prices, not Sydney) | |||||
| Mar 19791 | $210.28 | 4.9 min | 6.3 min | 5.1 min | —10 |
Mar 1979: wage $210.28 (FY 1978–79) ÷ 40 = $5.26/h · beer 285 ml 43c → 4.9 min · bread 680 g 55c → 6.3 min · milk 2 × 600 ml 54c = 45c/L → 5.1 min (ABS 6403.0) | |||||
| Mar 19842 | $346.00 | 5.5 min | 5.7 min | 4.6 min | 3.0 min |
Mar 1984: wage $346.00 (AWOTE, Nov 1983) ÷ 38 = $9.11/h · beer 84c → 5.5 min · bread 680 g 86c → 5.7 min · milk 1 L 70c → 4.6 min · super 45.6c/L → 3.0 min (ABS 6403.0) | |||||
| Dec 19902 | $555.60 | 6.2 min | 6.0 min | 3.6 min | 3.3 min |
Dec 1990: wage $555.60 (AWOTE, Nov 1990) ÷ 38 = $14.62/h · beer $1.51 → 6.2 min · bread 680 g $1.46 → 6.0 min · milk 1 L 88c → 3.6 min · super 81.2c/L → 3.3 min (ABS 6403.0) | |||||
| Dec 20052,4 | $1,011.80 | 5.5 min | 6.4 min | 3.3 min | 2.7 min |
Dec 2005: wage $1,011.80 (AWOTE, Nov 2005) ÷ 38 = $26.63/h · beer $2.45 → 5.5 min · bread 650 g $2.86 → 6.4 min · milk 2 L $2.95 = $1.48/L → 3.3 min · ULP 118.8c/L → 2.7 min (ABS 6403.0.55.001) | |||||
| Jun 20112,4 | $1,330.10 | 5.9 min | 6.0 min | 2.6 min | 2.5 min |
Jun 2011 (final ABS issue): wage $1,330.10 (AWOTE, Nov 2011) ÷ 38 = $35.00/h · beer $3.42 → 5.9 min · bread 650–750 g $3.51 → 6.0 min · milk 2 L $3.06 = $1.53/L → 2.6 min · ULP 143.0c/L → 2.5 min (ABS 6403.0.55.001) | |||||
| Today2,8,9 | $2,051.10 | 8.9–10.6 min† | 5.7 min* | 2.5 min* | 2.0 min |
Today: wage $2,051.10 (AWOTE, Nov 2025) ÷ 38 = $53.98/h · beer schooner $8.00–$9.50 (media-reported, 2023) → 8.9–10.6 min† (premium venues $12.00 → 13.3 min) · bread $3.51 × (143.9 ÷ 99.2 CPI) = $5.09 → 5.7 min* · milk $3.06 × 1.451 = $4.44/2 L = $2.22/L → 2.5 min* · petrol 180.1c/L (ACCC, FY 2024–25 five-city average) → 2.0 min · *derived, not measured · †media-reported, not official statistics | |||||
- Wage series to 1979 rows: average weekly earnings per employed male unit, RBA Occasional Paper 8, Table 4.17. Financial-year wages are matched to the nearest price quarter.
- Wage series from 1984 rows: AWOTE — full-time adults (RBA OP8 Table 4.18), then full-time adult persons from 2005 (ABS 6302.0, series A85002148L). The 1981–83 join is a genuine series break; minutes either side are close cousins, not exact continuations.
- Pre-decimal prices convert at the official changeover rate of £1 = $2 (14 February 1966). Hourly wages: weekly ÷ 40 before 1983, ÷ 38 after.
- The "loaf" drifted: 2 lb (907 g) to 1970, 680 g sliced white 1979–1990, 650 g in 2005, 650–750 g in 2011. Minutes are per loaf as sold, not per gram.
- Milk: imperial quart (1.136 L) to 1970, then 1 L or 2 L containers. The per-litre normalisation is ours; container prices are in the workings.
- Beer is the public-bar 285 ml glass. The 1952 figure is the Sydney middy under price control; 1973 is the ACT recommended price (closest dated anchor we could source), not Sydney.
- Petrol: super grade 1984–1990, unleaded 2005–2011, and the ACCC's FY 2024–25 five-largest-cities average (180.1c/L) today — a national-city average, not Sydney alone.
- Today's bread and milk are derived, not measured: June 2011 ABS price × Sydney All-groups CPI growth (index 99.2 → 143.9, June 2011 → September 2025 quarter, ABS Data API), against the November 2025 wage. The official retail-price series ended in June 2011, so these are clearly-labelled estimates pending a dated shelf-price capture.
- Today's beer is a media-reported range, not official statistics — the ABS stopped pricing public-bar beer in June 2011 and no official successor exists. The range: a typical schooner at $8.00–$9.50 by 2023 (news.com.au), $12.00–$14.20 at premium and inner-city venues (Nine, 4 March 2026; news.com.au), and an AHA recommended schooner price of $9.50 in March 2026. A dated Sydney price-board capture is the upgrade path to a single hard number.
- No reliable source — we'd rather show a gap than a guess. Known retrieval paths for these cells are listed on the data page.