But Southern Youth And Family Services CEO Narelle Clay said young people in the Illawarra were already doing it tough.

"There's already a lot of pressure with high youth unemployment rates in the region and the available work being predominantly casual, low paid and short term," she said.

"These are pressures that affect homelessness and with rising education costs, it paints a dismal picture."

Wollongong youth services advocate Brianna Muir said rising education costs had created a catch-22 for socioeconomically disadvantaged young people.

"You need qualifications to get a job but you can't afford to get the [qualifications] without a job," she said.

"The government wants people to earn or learn but then they try to increase the costs."

The size of our youngest generation will grow by half over the next four decades, the new report from the Foundation for Young Australians has found.

Already almost a third of young people are unemployed or under-employed and those who went to university are saddled with $24,000 more debt than their parents.

To buy a first home they have to take out loans three times larger than did their parents.

The proportion working part-time only is three times what it was 30 years ago.

By 2050 it's predicted the amount of government spending that directly benefits young people will drop from 46 per cent of total expenditure to 37 per cent.

At the same time, spending on older Australians will increase.

Foundation chief executive Jan Owen said young Australians were the country's social and economic lifeblood, needed "to secure Australia's tomorrow".

The longer the needs of young people were ignored, their potential discounted, and their talents and energy wasted, the "bigger and uglier" the future economic problems of our nation were going to get.