When Sydneysiders are asked what worries them most, there are normally all sorts of responses ranging from the economy to health care, housing, the environment, crime and even petrol prices.

But in 2023, a single anxiety came to dominate: the cost of living.

The cost-of-living crunch has affected spending patterns.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Survey after survey showed households felt they were going backwards financially due to the combined pressures of high inflation and rising interest rates.

A Resolve Political Monitor survey, published by this masthead last month, found 60 per cent of voters did not think their income had kept up with inflation over the past year (only 19 per cent said their income had kept up).

The Ipsos Issues Monitor, a quarterly poll asking respondents to select the most important challenges facing NSW showed more than 63 per cent identified the cost of living among their top concerns throughout this year – way higher than any issue tracked by the survey since 2010.

“It’s rare to see a single issue dominate as living costs have this past year, it’s been all consuming,” says Jim Reed, who conducts the Resolve Political Monitor.

“War, terrorism, climate change and COVID have all spiked this century, but have subsided fairly quickly as fear of the unknown is normalised. The difference here is that higher grocery, fuel and housing costs are being felt acutely by most people. It isn’t fear, it’s the lived reality.”

Despite the cost of living crunch, the NSW economy has been resilient in 2023.

Unemployment fell to just 2.9 per cent in June, the lowest since monthly state figures were first published in 1979. An impressive 115,000 jobs were added during the year to November, lifting the NSW workforce to a record 4.46 million.

The state economy grew by a healthy 3.7 per cent in the year to June 2023, equal highest since Sydney hosted the Olympic Games in 2000. Sydney house prices have climbed around 10 per cent in 2023 despite higher interest rates.

But signs of a slowdown are becoming apparent. The jobless rate has climbed from those historic mid-year lows; the number of unemployed people in NSW has grown by almost 25,000 since June. Business surveys suggest there........

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