6,500 Jobs Cut Every Day. Your Name Might Already Be on the List.

I used to work in IT. Good salary, comfortable life, all the trappings of the Australian middle class. If I had stayed in that lane and never bought investment property, I would be writing this article from a very different place right now. Probably updating my LinkedIn headline to 'open to work' while staring at the ceiling at 2am.

Instead, I am writing this from a position where my passive rental income exceeds what most white-collar salaries pay. And that shift did not happen by accident. It happened because I recognised something early that most people are only just waking up to now: your job is not an asset. It is a liability with an expiry date.

The numbers from the first two months of this year are staggering. Over 400,000 people globally have been laid off or are in the process of being made redundant. That works out to 6,557 people per day receiving termination notices. In America alone, the private sector shed 100,000 jobs in January — the worst start to a year since the 2009 financial crisis. Government departments have cut 220,000 positions. Australian banks have axed 8,000 roles. The tech sector has lost another 50,000.

The two myths that keep people poor

There are two narratives circulating right now that I need to dismantle, because they are actively preventing people from protecting themselves.

The first myth goes like this: 'Wait for the crash. Property prices will halve and everyone will be able to buy.' If you believe this, I need you to study history. World War One. World War Two. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The 2020 pandemic that killed millions of working-age adults globally. In none of these scenarios did property prices collapse and stay down. Not in Australia. Not in any comparable developed economy.

Wealth does not disappear during a crisis. It transfers. When you get poorer during a downturn, your employer's shareholders get richer. The people who already own assets buy more assets at temporary discounts. The people waiting on the sidelines for the 'perfect moment' watch prices recover and realise they have been priced out permanently.

The second myth is more insidious: 'Companies are not really laying people off because of AI. It is just a convenient excuse for cost-cutting.' If you believe this, you are choosing comfort over reality. I spent years in the technology sector. I watched automation eat entire departments alive. The difference now is that AI does not just automate repetitive manual tasks. It automates cognitive work. The very work that white-collar professionals assumed would keep them safe.

Capital is projected to automate 85 million job functions by the end of this cycle. Eighty per cent of customer service roles will disappear. Forty-six per cent of administrative work can be automated today, not in five years. Even legal assistants face 80 per cent automation risk. Programmers are seeing 50 per cent workforce reductions at major firms.

This is not a blue-collar problem. This is a white-collar extinction event.

Why I left a comfortable salary to build rental income

When I was earning a strong IT salary, I made a decision that my friends thought was reckless. Instead of upgrading my lifestyle to match my income — the house in a prestige suburb, the European car, the annual overseas holiday — I kept my personal expenses minimal and funnelled everything into investment property.

My own home is cheap. Deliberately so. It represents less than one-tenth of my total investment portfolio. Every other dollar went into building a rental income machine across Melbourne's southeast corridors.

The logic was simple. My salary required me to show up every day and perform. If I stopped performing, or if my role was eliminated, the salary would stop. Rental income from well-selected, well-managed properties does not care whether I show up. It flows whether I am working, sleeping, or sitting on a beach.

Today, across our portfolio of 350-plus managed properties, our clients' average rental income is $709 per week. Many of our properties in the Hampton Park and Cranbourne corridors generate $850 per week or more after light renovation. These are not theoretical numbers. These are rents hitting bank accounts every fortnight.

The investors who acted while they still had stable incomes are now insulated. The ones who waited are now trying to enter the market with less borrowing capacity, higher interest rates, and fewer options.

The maths behind this decision are brutally simple. When I was earning a good IT salary, I could have used that money to lease a nicer car, upgrade to a bigger house, or take three holidays a year. Instead, I drove a modest car, lived in a modest home, and poured the surplus into deposits.

My first investment property in the southeast cost me around $500,000. Within 18 months, the bank valued it at $580,000. I used that equity to fund the deposit on the second property. The second property's growth funded the third. Each step was deliberate. Each step was boring. Each step was the opposite of what my social circle was doing.

But boring works. Boring compounds. Boring builds a wall between you and the next economic shock.

We apply the same principle for every client who walks through our door. The first question is not 'what is your dream property?' It is 'what is your borrowing capacity right now, and how quickly can we convert that into a cash-flow-positive asset?' Because borrowing capacity is not permanent. It depends on employment income. And employment income, as 6,557 people per day are discovering, can evaporate overnight.

Our granny flat program is a direct response to this reality. For approximately $110,000 in construction cost, we add a secondary dwelling to an existing property that generates an additional $300 to $400 per week in rental income. The ROI on granny flat builds averages 18 per cent. That is income that flows whether the landlord is employed or not. Whether AI has replaced their department or not. Whether their industry exists in five years or not.

The Melbourne suburbs that protect against income disruption

Not all property protects equally against income volatility. The key is understanding which suburbs house tenants whose jobs are structurally resistant to automation.

Our core operating areas — Cranbourne, Hampton Park, Narre Warren, Berwick, Frankston — are dominated by healthcare workers, tradespeople, logistics operators, and essential service employees. These are physical-presence roles that AI cannot replicate. A plumber needs to be under your sink. A nurse needs to be at the bedside. A warehouse operator needs to be on the floor.

Contrast this with CBD apartment precincts like Southbank and Docklands. The tenant base there skews heavily toward financial services, professional services, and tech — exactly the sectors being gutted by automation. When those tenants lose their jobs, they lose their ability to pay $600 per week in rent. Vacancy rates spike. Landlords scramble.

Our investment thesis has always centred on what we call the 80 per cent land rule. We only acquire properties where the land component represents at least 80 per cent of the total value. These are established houses on 600-plus square metre blocks in supply-constrained suburbs where no new land is being created. The buildings depreciate. The land appreciates. And the tenants who live there work in sectors that will exist for decades to come.

A typical acquisition in Hampton Park at $590,000 on a 600-square-metre block, renovated to achieve $850 per week in rent, produces a gross rental yield north of 7 per cent. That yield covers the mortgage, the management fees, and still puts cash in the landlord's pocket. Whether the landlord has a job or not.

I want to share one more data point that reinforces this thesis. Our off-market acquisition rate in the far southeast has been climbing steadily. Over 40 per cent of our recent purchases in Hampton Park and Cranbourne were off-market — meaning they never appeared on realestate.com.au or Domain. We secured them through direct agent relationships before they reached public listing.

This matters because off-market properties in supply-constrained suburbs represent a structural advantage that compounds over time. The buyer who accesses these deals acquires at prices that reflect the pre-marketing valuation, not the competitive tension of an auction campaign. The average discount on our off-market acquisitions relative to estimated on-market prices sits between $20,000 and $40,000. That is instant equity that goes straight into the investor's balance sheet.

The robot argument is a distraction

I keep hearing people parrot the idea that within three years, robots will make everyone wealthy. That universal basic abundance is around the corner. That we just need to hold on a little longer and technology will save us.

Let me ground this in reality. A commercial-grade humanoid robot currently costs around $200,000 AUD. When these become available at consumer scale, who do you think will be buying them? The family struggling to pay their $550 weekly rent, or the investor who already has passive income streams and can deploy a robot to generate even more income?

Technology amplifies existing advantages. It does not redistribute them. If you own assets and have cash flow, robots and AI work for you. If you do not own assets, robots and AI compete against you for the shrinking pool of available work.

We already see this pattern with existing automation. Robotic vacuum cleaners cost $1,500. Robotic lawn mowers cost $3,000. These are productivity tools that property owners use to reduce management costs. The people renting those properties are paying for the privilege of living in a home where the landlord's costs keep declining while their rent keeps rising.

The question is not whether automation is coming. It is whether you will be on the owning side or the renting side when it arrives.

I want to address the people who think this conversation is fear-mongering. It is not. It is pattern recognition.

Every major technological transition in history has produced winners and losers. The winners were consistently the people who owned productive assets before the transition reached its peak. The losers were the people who relied on selling their labour to someone else.

The agricultural revolution benefited landowners. The industrial revolution benefited factory owners. The digital revolution benefited platform owners. The AI revolution will benefit asset owners.

Property is the most accessible productive asset available to ordinary Australians. You do not need a computer science degree. You do not need to understand machine learning algorithms. You need a deposit, borrowing capacity, and a strategy for acquiring assets that generate income independent of your employment.

Our clients across Melbourne's southeast — from Cranbourne through Hampton Park, Narre Warren, and Berwick — are building exactly this kind of resilience. Their properties sit on 600-plus square metres of land in suburbs where no new land supply exists. Their tenants work in healthcare, trades, and logistics — roles that require physical presence and cannot be automated. Their rental yields cover mortgages with room to spare.

This is not theoretical portfolio construction. This is 350-plus data points confirming that the strategy works in practice.

What to do before the next round of cuts

If you are currently employed and reading this, you have a window of opportunity that is closing. Here is what I would do with it.

First, get your borrowing capacity assessed now, while you still have payslips to show the bank. Once you are made redundant, your borrowing capacity goes to zero overnight. The time to secure finance is while the income is flowing.

Second, stop waiting for the perfect property. In our experience across 350-plus transactions, the investors who build the best portfolios are the ones who buy strategically and improve their holdings through renovation, not the ones who spend three years searching for a unicorn that does not exist.

Third, focus on positive cash flow from day one. The era of negative gearing as a primary strategy is over for anyone whose income is at risk. If you lose your job and your investment property costs you $200 per week out of pocket, that property becomes a financial anchor dragging you under. Every property we acquire for clients is structured to be cash flow positive within the first 12 months, typically achieving rental yields of 5 to 8 per cent after our renovation and management process.

I share this not because I want people to panic. I share it because I have lived through the alternative. I watched colleagues lose their tech jobs and scramble. The ones who had built passive income through property were uncomfortable but financially intact. The ones who had relied solely on their salary were devastated.

The layoff tsunami is not coming. It is already here. The only question is whether you will have built your ark by the time it reaches your desk.