Jacob Shteyman

Jacob Shteyman is a business journalist at The Canberra Times who focuses on how economic policy, housing markets and generational shifts translate into everyday financial pressure. His coverage links budget settings, tax rules and planning decisions to changes in property investment, rental costs and living standards across age groups. He reports with a policy-literate, data-aware style that keeps institutional decisions and their distributional impact at the centre of his business beat.

Housing, planning and property markets

Housing and property are a core strand of Shteyman’s work, and he treats them as economic stories rather than just market snapshots. He has covered auction activity in the wake of the federal budget, using clearance data and buyer behaviour to gauge how policy announcements are feeding through to the first post-budget auction weekend.

He examines how planning rules shape housing affordability, including a detailed look at proposals to scrap mandatory car park requirements and how that could make homes cheaper by reducing construction costs and changing the way developments are designed. Rental stress is a recurring concern: he reports that households are devoting about a third of their income to rent and explores how rising rents and falling real wages have left young Australians no better off than previous generations. His housing stories often frame property as a generational fault line, analysing how past policy decisions encouraged older Australians to become investors and the consequences of that shift for those locked out of ownership.

Tax, energy and economic policy

Shteyman’s business coverage extends into tax and industry economics, with a focus on whether resource and investment booms are delivering public benefit. He has reported on the “tiny” tax returns generated by gas projects, highlighting the frustration of a leading economist at how little revenue the sector delivers relative to its scale. In macroeconomic reporting he draws on national accounts data, writing about how a data centre investment boom coincided with only modest GDP growth and what that says about the broader economy. These stories emphasize the gap between headline investment narratives and the actual fiscal and economic outcomes, and they often interrogate whether current tax settings are fit for purpose.

Generational divides and cost-of-living pressure

A strong through-line in his work is generational inequality in the face of cost-of-living pressures. In his coverage of a “generational rupture,” he brings together statistics on rents and real wages with the experiences of younger Australians who feel squeezed despite doing what was traditionally expected to get ahead. His reporting tracks how structural factors such as tax concessions for investors, high housing costs and flat wage growth combine to erode the prospects of people entering the workforce and rental market today. Pieces on record rental burdens and stagnating living standards show his preference for connecting individual stories to larger economic trends rather than treating them as separate human-interest features.

Institutions, politics and social policy

Alongside core business coverage, Shteyman regularly reports on public institutions, politics and social policy, often with an economic lens. He has covered the electoral fortunes of Labor in a territory contest, focusing on how timing and political dynamics shape the party’s prospects. His reporting on newly unearthed documents around the Iraq War revisits earlier government decisions and their legacy, showing a willingness to engage with long-running questions of accountability. He has examined major funding decisions, including a story on a “decaying” sports institute that is set to receive a $250 million Olympic-focused makeover, unpacking how infrastructure investment is justified and allocated.

Institutional transparency is another recurring theme. His work on university governance and executive spending has been cited in public debates calling for more clarity around how taxpayer funds are used, and for stronger oversight of large cost-cutting programs. On the social policy side he has reported on vapes seized in South Australia amid concern over teen use, as well as leaders’ Christmas messages that praise national resilience and community spirit. These pieces show his breadth across policy areas while maintaining an interest in how decisions by governments and institutions shape financial and social outcomes for ordinary people.

Science, community stories and regional reach

Shteyman occasionally turns to science and community features, particularly where they intersect with public interest and research. He has explained the discovery of an ancient fossil koala ancestor, Lumakoala, describing how a 25‑million‑year‑old species about the size of a domestic cat fills a gap in understanding koala evolution. His reporting makes technical findings accessible without losing the detail that matters to scientists and readers alike.

Beyond the capital-city masthead, his byline appears in regional outlets such as Eden Magnet, where he has co-written on record-high rent burdens and the share of household income now consumed by housing costs. Across these platforms his work consistently returns to the economic structures behind everyday pressures, whether the story begins with a budget measure, a tax regime, a housing regulation or a generational story about how people are coping.