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Is life getting better in NSW?
Some key economic indicators suggest the answer is yes: the state’s output has expanded steadily in the past few years and unemployment has been fairly low.
But there’s more to life than growth figures and many things that contribute to our collective welfare are not captured by traditional economic statistics.
With that in mind, the NSW government has started tracking the wellbeing of residents, not just dollars and cents, as part of its annual budget.
The second NSW Performance and Wellbeing Framework will be published with the state budget on June 23. It tracks wellbeing across eight indicators: health, skills, prosperity, housing, security, community, connectedness and sustainability.
Several wealthy nations have developed ways to measure the wellbeing of their citizens amid concerns regular economic statistics do not provide sufficiently detailed information about the quality of life that ordinary people experience.
NSW Finance Minister Courtney Houssos, who announced the new data-informed approach in 2024, says that while the framework is still “maturing” it is already helping to guide government decision-making.
“I think it’s an important way of us explaining to the community why we’re taking the decisions that we’re taking,” she told this masthead.
Is wellbeing improving?
One metric the government uses to track overall wellbeing is how residents rate their life satisfaction out of 10 (10 being “totally satisfied”).
The Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey shows average life satisfaction in NSW has hovered around the 7.9 mark for the past two decades.
The latest results, for 2024, found the state’s average score was 7.96 out of 10, close the national average of 7.98.
Houssos says the Performance and Wellbeing Framework is beginning to reveal improvements at a more granular level, especially in education.
One example is the results of a phonics check for all Year 1 students introduced by the previous Coalition government in 2022.
The proportion of students meeting or exceeding the expected achievement level has increased from 55 per cent in 2022 to 64 per cent in 2025.
Houssos also draws attention to a decline in teacher vacancies and cancelled classes in NSW schools.
The number of positions permanently vacant and being recruited on the first day of the year in NSW has fallen from 3.22 per cent in 2022 to 1.57 per cent this year.
“We can’t tell these stories in a budget paper,” says Houssos. “What the performance and wellbeing framework allows us to say is we’re reducing teacher vacancies, we’ve got our phonics check in place, and this is what’s happening as a result of it.”
The framework has drawn attention to other wellbeing improvements in NSW, including rising life expectancy, a growing share of adults meeting physical activity guidelines and higher customer satisfaction with NSW government services.
But not all wellbeing indicators are improving.
One worrying trend is an increase in the number of emergency cases presenting at NSW hospitals.
“That’s something we’re tracking,” says Houssos. “We can say, ‘OK we’ve got more people turning up in emergency rooms, and they are sicker, so how do we respond appropriately to that?’.”
Economic headwinds and budget pressures
Elevated inflation, higher interest rates and subdued growth are likely to be a drag on the wellbeing of many NSW households in the year ahead.
In a recent speech, NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey revealed the state’s expected economic growth rate for the coming financial year would be slashed to just 1 per cent in this month’s budget, down from the 2.5 per cent forecast in December.
He also said government revenue would be “substantially” downgraded.
Houssos said these economic headwinds meant overall wellbeing outcomes in NSW were uncertain.
“We’re in the midst of a fuel crisis, there’s a lot of geopolitical uncertainty, and we’ve already seen three interest rate increases this year, so families and businesses are under a huge amount of pressure,” she said.
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