‘Why is everything so expensive right now?’

Exclusive: It is no secret Australia is in the midst of a devastating affordability crisis, with prices skyrocketing in every direction and wages remaining stagnant, pressure has mounted on governments to take immediate, drastic action.

With little relief in sight, Aussies are scrambling for answers.

Exclusive data, obtained by 9news.com.au, has revealed for the first time just how desperate people are for answers that searches relating to the word "expensive" have reached an all-time high in Australia.

The ACT, Western Australia and South Australia are the top jurisdictions searching for cost of living queries nationally, with searches relating to interest rates, inflation and the official cash rate also reaching all-time highs over the past 12 months.

Australia is now one of the top five countries across the globe searching for "interest rates" and "recession", while search interest in "savings" also reached an all-time high in April, landing Aussies in the top ten nations across the world googling the topic in 2023.

In addition, we're ranked in the top five countries globally googling "mortgage loans" and we've also ranked within the top 10 countries searching for "housing" so this year.

Though the ACT, WA and SA are the top regions overall searching for cost of living information, smaller towns and jurisdictions have also clearly felt the brunt of the crisis, with a number of individual localities reporting a huge boom in affordability searches.

Burrum Heads and Bundaberg in Queensland were the top two individual localities searching for "cost of living" per capita, following by Bunbury in WA, Hervey Bay in Queensland, Wagga Wagga and Albury in New South Wales, Canberra in the ACT, Queanbeyan in NSW, Perth and Brisbane.

"Will the cost of living go down in Australia", "why is the cost of living so high in Australia" and "when will the cost of living go down?" were the top three questions asked on the search engine, with "how to save money", "how to budget and save" and "how to add another savings account on the Commbank app" the top three searches relating to savings.

If you've ever felt frustrated by the rising price of flight tickets, you're most certainly not alone, with the data also showing a 4750 per cent increase in "why are flights so expensive right now?" searches.

Aussies and Kiwis are Googling "official cash rate" at the highest rates in the world, with our New Zealand neighbours only narrowly eclipsing us in volume.

After Canada, Australians are searching for the term "rebate" at the highest rate in the world.