re: There should be little sympathy for college graduates struggling to earn a livable wage

@swamptiger99

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You think I went to those schools?

I'm on a message board called TigerDroppings, what college you think I went too?

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If you're still following replies, start using a service like Resume Worded on your resume. I have a recent grad kid who was getting no responses until we figured out her resume wasn't making it past the automated Applicant Tracking Systems now in widespread use. Resume Worded and the other major competitor in the field - I forget the name - help tailor the resume to get past ATS. Once she did that, she immediately started getting interviews.

grade inflation is a big thing in academia and is devaluing the college degree, if you have 2 brain cells and make any sort of effort to succeed you will be able to pass because grade curves

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if you have 2 brain cells and make any sort of effort to succeed you will be able to pass because grade curves

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I mean maybe for gender studies or some program that doesn't involve numbers or Greek letters, but anything that is technical in nature often has little or no grade curve.

Okay got it. You don’t understand.

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Houses built in the 80s are still on the market and still cost much higher as a proportion of the average salary than it did in the 80s.

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The average cost of a home when the decade started was $73,600.

The average cost of a house when the decade ended was $151,200.

A lot of people don't remember that, but the 80s saw houses literally double in price.

In 1980 the average salary was $12,513.46 per year.

In 1988 it was $19,238.70 (I couldn't find 1989 numbers, so that may be a shade low).

So the average home price to salary ratio in 1980 was about 5.88 times more than salary.

In 1988/89, the ratio was roughly 7.86.

In 2024 the average salary is about $58,448 and the average home price is roughly $412,300, for a salary to price ratio of 7.05.

So better than the late 80s, not as good as the early 80s,

BUT...

The early 80s were when interest rates were at the very highest. 18.63% in October of 1981.

Find a mortgage calculator and run some numbers if you don't think an interest rate that high won't send your mortgage payment out of sight.

This stuff isn't hard to find, but the media loves to stir people up with this narrative that young people today have it so much harder than they did back 30-50 years ago.

They don't.

Spend an hour looking up prices now vs then rather than just believing the narrative. It's simply not true. Not nearly as true as they would have you believe, anyway.

Most food items are about the same. As mentioned earlier, cars are more expensive now, but last 2-3 times longer. Gas is pretty much the same.

IMO the biggest difference is in expectations.

Young people now EXPECT to be able to graduate college and buy a house and a new car or two immediately. And eat out all the time, and subscribe to all sorts of streaming services, and belong to a gym, and do all sorts of things my parents did not do growing up.

I was born in 1970. We lived in a house that I bet was less than 1500 square feet until I was about 8 or 9. No central air. We had an attic fan and a window unit in the den that only my father was allowed to turn on. One bathroom for four people (five by the time we moved out). My parents rented it. We rarely ate out. We ate leftovers for dinner and took them to school for lunch. We wore hand-me-down clothes, rode hand-me-down bicycles, played with hand-me-down toys. Getting new shoes was a big deal. We had one telephone attached to the wall in the kitchen and we couldn't call long distance until after 6:00 on Sunday when the rates went down. We had one television set but no cable, so we put tinfoil on the rabbit ears and did our best to get channels 3, 9, and 12 to come in with decent reception. My parents bought exactly one new car their whole lives, a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle, and they shared it. Every other car they ever bought for the rest of their lives was used. We didn't go to the grocery store and buy whatever we wanted. My mother would buy what was on sale and plan the menu around those things. The first house my parents actually bought instead of renting was when they were around 40 years old.

And we were not poor or considered poor.

That's how most middle class people lived back then.

Expectations now are completely different.

As to this:

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What % of these 40% larger houses make up the total market?

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It's a continuum. Remember, in the 80s there were houses on the market from the 40s and 50s (which were even smaller than the ones being built in the 80s...that house I just described was one of them) just like there are houses on the market now from the 80s.

Middle class in 1985 meant you had a 3 bed and 1 1/2 bath 1500 sf home with a 1/2 to full acre. Lived 15-20 miles away from a large city. Had a decent “newer” vehicle and a backup usually 5-10 years old. Went on one family vacation a year. Ate out rarely, maybe once a month at most. Kids played sports at local rec departments and rode bikes and played in creeks and woods for fun.

Middle class standards have changed drastically in 30-40 years.

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Middle class in 1985 meant you had a 3 bed and 1 1/2 bath 1500 sf home with a 1/2 to full acre. Lived 15-20 miles away from a large city. Had a decent “newer” vehicle and a backup usually 5-10 years old. Went on one family vacation a year. Ate out rarely, maybe once a month at most. Kids played sports at local rec departments and rode bikes and played in creeks and woods for fun.

Middle class standards have changed drastically in 30-40 years.

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Yes and amen, and that's the big difference.

Not what "young people are facing today economically."

With one exception. The cost of college. That has increased far beyond inflation.

But again...the difference in expectations has created very different behavior.

It was common when I went to college in 1988 to do the following:

1. If you lived close enough, it was common to live at home while attending college to save money.

2. Many people attended a junior college or community college for two years to complete core requirements before transferring to a major university to save money.

3. Unless they got into Harvard or something people only went to in-state colleges to avoid out of state tuition.

4. Students worked while in college to defray expenses. Not all of them, but the large majority of them. Even the ones who didn't work during the class term worked during the summer and saved the money to use during the school year.

5. Students would live in trailers or other very low cost housing while in school.

Now those things are done by only a small minority of students. Especially working while in school. And most students live in luxury dorms and apartments. I mean nicer than anything I ever lived in as a 20-something with a job.

People are not interested in doing the things that would lower costs anymore. They feel entitled to live it up and then complain because they "don't have the same opportunities that other generations did."

Most people 30-50 years ago didn't have the opportunity to live like that either.

So they didn't.

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You can still do all of these things

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Absolutely. That's my point.

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college is very affordable.

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But to be fair, legitimately less affordable than it used to be.

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What makes college expensive is the room/board/etc.

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It's a lot of it for sure.

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Middle class in 1985 meant you had a 3 bed and 1 1/2 bath 1500 sf home with a 1/2 to full acre. Lived 15-20 miles away from a large city. Had a decent “newer” vehicle and a backup usually 5-10 years old. Went on one family vacation a year. Ate out rarely, maybe once a month at most. Kids played sports at local rec departments and rode bikes and played in creeks and woods for fun.

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And all of that is more expensive today relative to avarage salary

There is nothing you can do to erase that fact