Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Layoffs have been limited to tech And in all honesty, good. Tech Bros (myself included) needed to be cut to size. There was a lot of hubris by my peers in the 2010s.
I love the lack of sympathy for tech workers across North America or perhaps even globally, when tech hub salaries still don’t allow tech workers to even have a middle class lifestyle. Very few people I know get paid enough to buy a starter home within 2 or 3 hours of where they work. I get paid more than my non tech peers yet still functionally have less spending power than a 25 year old from 30 years ago, despite b…
This seems like some non-generic case specific to your situation and not representative of the average experience.
The median income in 1994 for over-25-year-olds (men only!) was $25,465 [0], women was less than half of that. Let's go with the figure for men for the sake of discussion.
$25,465 in 1994 is the buying power of $55k today [1]. $55k is the 56th percentile [2], so right where we'd expect it to be.
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1994: median home price $142,200 [3], interest rate 30-year fixed: 8.38% [4]
Principal balance $113,760 @ 8.38%, payment (P&I): $865, or 3.4% of annual income
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2024: median home price $384,500 [5], interest rate 30-year fixed: 7% [6]
Principal balance $307,600 @ 7%, payment (P&I): $2,046, 3.7% of annual income
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Opinion incoming: I think there are 2 things that make 'today' seem more expensive than 'back then': implacable consumerism, and the natural change of places over time (ie, gentrification & co).
w/r/t consumerism, the load on both 'necessary' and discretionary spending has increased big-time - people were not generally paying for broadband, smartphones, gaming consoles, home espresso machines, soundbars, portable speakers, media players, printers/copiers/scanners, I could go on forever. Look around you and count how many things straight-up didn't exist in 1994 (or were reserved for the ultrawealthy or for business). We could do without them today, but it would feel really bad, as if we're not participating in society or making use of its advancement.
w/r/t gentrification, many places today are more desirable than they used to be, and their increase in price is a function of demand rather than of inflation, so it feels like the economics of living got away from people who weren't already bought in. But it's not that "everything" got so much more expensive, it's that, for example, Akron OH used to be more expensive than San Jose (!!) because farming was the center of industry. Now the world changed and what used to be a pretty rural town full of fruit trees is the most expensive metro in the country. It's not because "houses got more expensive" per se, it's that the world changed.
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d96/d96t376.asp
[1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25%2C465&year1...
[2] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
[3] https://www.huduser.gov/periodicals/ushmc/winter2001/histdat...
[4] https://www.mpamag.com/us/mortgage-industry/guides/historica....
[5] https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/existing-home-sales/
[6] https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mortgage-interest-rates-f...