Is it me, or are jobs paying less and less, for more and more work?
I've long noticed this since the last big recession in 2008. Salaries froze and have not moved since then. Jobs paying $80K then, are still paying $80K now, except that the work load is a lot more, as well as more advanced. Meanwhile, inflation rose as usual, and housing costs hit the roof. Try finding a decent place to live on the East or West Coast for under $1,000 and it would be hard---And if you do find one there, or between the coasts, you will have to compromise with low/crappy maintenance and/or high noise levels, and uninvited visitors from the vermin family.
If you look at after tax dollars for a single person, for example in NYC, making $80K, which most would agree is a great salary. However, if you consider that renting in NYC gets you crap under $2000 (shoe box and hardly any light, etc), this person will hardly qualify for even such a unit (based on the requirements of your salary being 30x or 40x your rent). You see, this same apartment would likely have been $1000 in 2008--so $80K would have gone further. After taxes, this person will take home $4500 per month today--so $2200 every 2 weeks. So 1 check will cover rent, and the other has to cover food, transportation, loans or debt to pay off, and anything else--and that includes savings. New flash, $1000 dollars does not go very far nowadays.
For all of the expense created to get a degree or degrees, as well as experience over time, to earn this amount in this day and age (with the current costs of living), it simply does not compute. What are we sacrificing for? What kind of life can we really afford to live--even when doing everything right, as society would tell us to do? That earning $80K today, you have to watch over your shoulder at every single penny, is just not what should be.
The economy works in a circle. People have jobs to make money to buy consumer goods that the industries produce. If people are not earning enough to spend more, can the economy continue to sustainly grow as it has been? Yes, people spend, but they spend what they don't have, which are likely credit cards--debt money. If there was no credit system, people would not spend. But because we do, at some time later in life, people are enslaved to mediocre jobs to pay off the debt they have accumulated during the time they "thought" they had money to spend (though it was a credit allusion).
People need to earn more in America--especially because of the stagnation in salaries that occurred in 2008 recession. Those same $80K jobs back then should have moved by now to $100-120K+, according to the movement that was occurring before the recession.
People are not blind. They are realizing that they cannot afford things like they could in the past. And even for college graduates entering the workforce, they can't find jobs that can comfortably cover rent. That you need a roommate after college in order to live a normal life, sounds so preposterous to me. But it is happening. And it's also happening to those who have already been in the workforce for a long while now. Affording your own space as a single person is becoming crazier to do everyday. We should be able to do that and save some money along the way. So when things like Corona-Covid19 happens, we don't need the government to rescue us. At least, not so many at once.
Something is the matter in America. And we need to fix it before it's too late.
