Nearly a third of all ACT households now have debt levels three or more times their total income, putting Canberra in second place of all jurisdictions for household debt on that measure.
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The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday published its latest household income and expenditure survey, showing more equal incomes nationally, despite low wage growth leading to a doubling of average household debt.
It shows some 29 per cent of all ACT households had debt three times their income in 2015-16, a figure that has risen 10.3 percentage points since the 2003-04 level of 18.7 per cent.
The rising levels of household debt in Canberra come despite the ACT having the highest levels of mean household disposable income in the nation in 2015-16.
Owners without a mortgage on average had about $1124 of mean equivalised disposable income, owners with a mortgage had $1321 and renters had about $920.
On average across Australia, owners without a mortgage had $971 of disposable income, owners with a mortgage had $1127 and renters had $868.
The data also revealed that after Sydney ($1710.10), Canberra households had the next highest weekly expenditure of all capital cities ($1670.19).
The city's weekly spend was $133.59 more than the Australian average, likely a function partly of Canberra's high average incomes.
However, the data also points to the divide in Canberra between those on medium to high incomes and those on the lowest.
Data published on mean income by quartile - or five different income bands - show Canberra's lowest income earners get just $361 a week, below the $378 a week national average.
But those figures show the ACT's top earner made $1820 a week, compared to the $1934 national average, while Canberrans in the second-highest income quartile earned $1181 a week compared to $1164 nationally.
The data also showed the ACT's housing costs were below the Australian average, ($295.46 a week in the ACT versus $305.85 nationally), most other expenses were above the national average.
This includes the cost of domestic fuel and power ($46.80 per week compared to $42.51); food and non-alcoholic drinks ($270.89 per week compared to $254.96 per week); transport ($225.24 per week compared to $212.77); medical care ($92.45 a week versus $88.85) and miscellaneous goods and services ($142.75 per week compared to $108.76).
However our recreation spend ($240.78) was about $55 more than the Australian average and the second only to Northern Territory residents, who spent $252.67 on entertainment a week.
The percentage Canberra households spent on booze was the lowest in Australia (1.8 per cent of weekly expenditure versus a national average of 2.1 per cent).
The ACT also spent the least each week on tobacco products (0.4 per cent of weekly household spent compared to a national average of 0.8 per cent), although that figure should be treated with caution, as it has a standard error 25 to 50 per cent.
One factor leading to the differing income levels could be Canberra's high number of university students and academics.
At least one in nine Canberrans work or study at an education institution, the highest level of any city in Australia.
Casual academic and PhD student Dylan Clements, 29, only finds out a week before the semester begins if he has a job.
"This time I found out in the first week how many tutes I had," the ANU tutor said.
"I thought I was going to be doing seven tutes but it turned out to be five but I was look at it being four. I lost 35 per cent of my expected income after the semester started."
His contracts are precarious and short-lived, based on a 12-week semester cycle.
During the semester, he can make up to $1500 a week, but outside that period, he can earn as little as $250 a week with whatever work he can secure.
On top of this, he estimates his personal debt is in the five-figures.
"It's the disappearing academic phenomenon. You end up with two jobs and shift through them sequentially," Mr Clements said.
First year post-grad ANU medical student Alex Keen said he was "doing okay at the moment", but he expected that by his third or fourth year of study, like many other medical students, he would need to rely on hefty bank loans.
"We work in the hospital in our third and fourth years for our pre-clinical years and most people don't try to balance that with a job because they're in the hospital all day and study all night," Mr Keen said.
"I'm more fortunate than most, I feel more comfortable accumulating a degree of debt with the awareness I'm doing a degree with job security.
"I've got friends who are studying science degrees, which don't lead to anything in Australia.
"People don't know what to do after they finish their degree because there's no jobs so they accumulate degrees. It's this odd progression."
Unions ACT secretary Alex White said decades of outsourcing and "trickle-down economics" in Canberra had led to employers now using "tax avoidance and wage-theft as business models".
"Even a job working for the government or a university is no protection against low incomes, insecure work or rip-offs," Mr White said.
