Ask around and you hear the same line: “no time”. Not for sport, not for friends, not for appointments. It is not just a feeling; the way Australians work and live has shifted in ways that chew up hours that used to be discretionary.
On the work side, staff shortages and cost pressures mean more overtime, more double shifts and more unpredictable rosters across sectors from health and hospitality to logistics and retail. For others, especially in office jobs, the hours might look normal on a payslip but stretch out once email, late calls and “just quickly” tasks outside business hours are counted. Commutes stack on top: longer drives from outer suburbs where housing is cheaper, crowded public transport, and the dead time that sits between job and home.[17][18][19]
Digital life does the rest. Smartphones mean work messages, news alerts and social feeds follow people everywhere. Mental‑health reporting has linked high screen time and constant connectivity with poor sleep, stress and difficulty switching off. Even leisure gets squeezed into algorithms: short‑form videos, doom‑scrolling, one more episode. The effect is that off‑time feels less restorative and more like another stream of low‑level demands.[24][17]
Rural health submissions and national mental‑health reports both describe the same pattern in different settings: people skipping medical care, study and community activities because they cannot find the time or energy. Parents juggle kids’ schedules and work; single workers juggle multiple jobs; older carers juggle paid work with looking after partners or grandkids. Weekends turn into catch‑up windows for chores, admin and the things that did not fit into weekdays.[18][17]
None of this shows up directly in GDP or unemployment numbers, but it shows up in exhaustion. When “free time” becomes fragmented minutes between obligations and notifications, people retreat. Clubs struggle to find volunteers, local sport loses coaches, and the background social glue gets thinner. The working week may be officially 38 hours, but for a lot of Australians the mental and logistical load runs much longer.[19][18]
Sources (links) https://www.salvationarmy.org.au/socialjusticestocktake/act/[19] https://www.ruralhealth.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/NRHA_Sub-Mental_Health_and_Suicide_Prevention_Agrmnt_Rev.pdf[18] https://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-07/national-report-card-2024_0.pdf[17] https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/australian-youth-barometer-2025-financial-pressures-intensify-for-young-australians-as-confid[24]