According to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than 5% of households earn $350,000 or more a year. While $350,000 might sound like a lot of money, it'll go quickly when you're raising a family in an expensive city. We all deserve to live a middle-class lifestyle.
Average Australian Salaries in 2023
A taxable income that was $131,501 or higher was within the top 10% of earners in Australia last year.
If you earned more than $253,066, then you took home more than 99 per cent of taxpayers. About 5 per cent of taxpayers had incomes above $180,000. The data, which covers the 11.39 million-strong taxpaying population, is presented in percentiles.
There aren't many of them, just 110,613 — 82,258 men and 28,355 women. Only 39,209 have taxable incomes of more than $500,000, and of these only 14,467 have taxable incomes of more than $1 million.
The average Australian would need to earn over $300,000 a year to consider themselves as officially "rich", new research has found.
According to the ATO, the top 1% of income earners in Australia start at $237,300 but average $438,100. Inspired by this article from the US, readers asked me to do an Australian version. Below I interviewed some households with incomes above $250,000 for singles or above $400,000 if a couple.
According to Credit Suisse, individuals with more than $1 million in wealth sit in the top 1 percent bracket. The billionaire class is $2.6 trillion richer than before the pandemic, even if billionaire fortunes slightly fell in 2022 after their record-smashing peak in 2021.
The average household gross income is $121,108, however the top 20% of households earn 48% of all income. With the bottom 20% who are left with 4% of Australia's income.
Top 10% income
The average earnings of those in the top 10% were roughly $173,000 in 2020, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Landing in the top 10% is a fairly attainable goal for upwardly mobile Americans.
From the top 5% to the top 1%
Salaries start to jump significantly the closer you get to the top 1%. You'll start to see dramatic shifts in the top 5%, where the EPI found the average earners significantly increased to $343,000 in 2020, up from $324,000 the year before.
Australia leapfrogs New Zealand for the top regional 0.1% level at US$7.9 million compared to US$7.5 million. Both are around double the Middle East's highest entry - the UAE at US$3.8 million.
The top 20% richest individuals have annual pre-tax incomes of about $330,000, the middle 20% make about $116,000 while the lowest 20% earn $41,000. In terms of income from investments, the biggest chunk is concentrated at the topmost. Close to 70% of investment income goes to the 20% most moneyed households.
So if you're on $100k or more, congratulations, you're in the top 20% of Aussie income earners. If not, don't worry, you're in the good company of 80% of Aussies.
A nationally representative survey of 1,081 respondents revealed the average Aussie would need to earn a whopping $336,516 per year to feel rich. That's more than six times greater than the median personal income of $52,338, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Overall, less than 3 per cent of Australians feel wealthy despite the fact that more than 15 per cent of those surveyed earn more than $200,000 a year. However, most people surveyed felt “comfortable” on their current wage, with 55 per cent indicating this on a sliding scale when asked if they felt wealthy.
Across the US, the average income for the top 2% of all earners is $206,000.
A 10% raise is well above average, but it might not be unreasonable. Depending on how long you've been with the company and when you last received a raise, you might be entitled to far more compensation than you're currently receiving.
You might need $5 million to $10 million to qualify as having a very high net worth while it may take $30 million or more to be considered ultra-high net worth. That's how financial advisors typically view wealth.
Someone earning $200,000 a year would be among the top 3.5 per cent of Australians who fall into the top tax bracket which cuts in at $180,000 a year.
Four in five Australians earn less than $100,000 with new tax figures revealing the federal budget is increasingly reliant on the nation's best-paid 1 per cent to cover the cost of growing services and infrastructure.
The average yearly salary in Australia is 90,800 AUD (USD 60,355).
The average full time salary in Australia is $70,000 per year or $35.90 per hour. Entry-level positions start at $57,500 per year, while most experienced workers make up to $107,150 per year.
On average, Australians have around $34,000 in savings but this varies significantly by age, gender, location, and income. Nearly three quarters (73%) of Australians are trying to build their savings but around 1 in 5 say they have less in savings now than they did three months ago.
Some 3.6 per cent of taxpayers were in the top taxable income bracket in 2019-20, up from 2 per cent in 2010-11, according to the latest Australian Taxation Office statistics analysed by The Australian Financial Review.