Economics, Jobs, housing etc, especially in the US

[Gloomy]

When my mom was 33, the same age as I am now, she was renting a one bedroom apartment like I am, in the same town I still live in. But she also had me and my sister to take care of and was working as a medical assistant and then as a cocktail waitress. On the other hand I have no kids and work as an accountant with a bachelor’s degree in business/finance. 
 

In fact, I recently saw an apartment in that same complex listed for rent (not sure if it was the exact same apartment, but it was in that same complex, seeing the interior pictures definitely brought back some memories). It was around $1795 per month, actually a few hundred dollars more than what I’m paying now in rent. With what I’m making right now, $1795 is barely below the “gross income needs to be at least 2.5 times the rent” rule many apartment management companies have when you apply to move there. I wonder if a cocktail waitress with two kids would be able to afford that now….

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[Lord Jade Cross]

4 hours ago, Gloomy said:

When my mom was 33, the same age as I am now, she was renting a one bedroom apartment like I am, in the same town I still live in. But she also had me and my sister to take care of and was working as a medical assistant and then as a cocktail waitress. On the other hand I have no kids and work as an accountant with a bachelor’s degree in business/finance. 
 

In fact, I recently saw an apartment in that same complex listed for rent (not sure if it was the exact same apartment, but it was in that same complex, seeing the interior pictures definitely brought back some memories). It was around $1795 per month, actually a few hundred dollars more than what I’m paying now in rent. With what I’m making right now, $1795 is barely below the “gross income needs to be at least 2.5 times the rent” rule many apartment management companies have when you apply to move there. I wonder if a cocktail waitress with two kids would be able to afford that now….

Not unless she gets a couple hundred or thousand in tips and I imagine only the wealthiest/most exclusive places will offer that, so the local bar wont do

 

Its interesting that apartment management expects almost 30% of a paycheck right off the bat, when alot of apartment complexes are in shit conditions and getting anything fixed is like trying to bleed rocks 

[Sally]

Apartment managers are employed by corporate owners and they are told to do whatever they can get away with.  If there are no laws against charging for something, they will do so.  

[Horse Ham Radio]

I think too many people just look at salary when choosing somewhere to live. You need to look at how much tax you'll pay and the cost of living in an area (not just the rents/house prices, but days/nights out, food, transport, cost to access to nature etc. all of which can vary greatly too).

 

It's one of the reasons why I chose Edinburgh over say London to live and work in. In Edinburgh, things are expensive for sure, but with a decent job you can have a decent standard of living here (broadly speaking..). In London, with a good job your standard of living is going to be lower than in Edinburgh with an equivalent job. Like your salary will be significantly higher in London, but the cost of living there eats up all that extra money and more.

 

For example, in London your salary after tax would probably be about £500-1000/month higher than in Edinburgh for a high-skilled technical job. For those not familiar with the UK, that is pretty large amount of additional money each month.

However, rents are easily £500-£1000/month higher for a start (for an equivalent size and quality of space - if you get smaller or live in a worse neighbourhood, you could save here), but eating out in London or going to events there will cost more too. Then there's the issue of affording somewhere to buy. Even if you could save a similar amount or more each month towards a deposit, you would need to save for two or three times as long to have a mortgage large enough to afford something equivalent as in Edinburgh, and then when you do buy it your mortgage will also be double or triple the size too, so you'll be paying much more for the next two or three decades of your life. In other words, London is much more difficult to afford to live in and even if you do manage to buy there, you'll have much higher costs going forward too.

 

In more remote places in the UK, like some little villages quite far from everything, even a minimum wage job can get you a good standard of living and the area will be nice. (although finding work in more remote places is of course much more difficult than in a city, and many people find such places boring or limited to live in).

[Gloomy]

I’ve definitely considered moving away where the cost of living is cheaper, but that’s a lot easier said than done. I’ve lived here my whole life, my parents still live here, my maternal grandma who already complains we don’t visit her enough lives here. This is the only home I’ve ever known, and once upon a time it was possible for middle and working class people to afford to buy a house here. I didn’t move to a high cost of living area, high cost of living moved here.

 

Also let’s say everyone who isn’t wealthy did move far away from certain areas, who’s gonna work at the grocery stores, restaurants, etc. around there? Sure some people argue that those kinds of jobs are for high school kids that still get taken care of by their parents, although if that were the case then those places would be closed during school hours and none of them would be open overnight. Plus there’s bars, liquor stores, smoke shops, those adult stores that sell porn and sex toys, weed dispensaries, my mom’s aforementioned waitress job was at a strip club. I mean I hope high school kids aren’t working at places like that! Then there’s jobs that adults work after doing some schooling like medical assistants and vet techs that don’t pay very well yet are still needed in most towns and cities. Teachers are known to not be paid well; if all of them move away then who’s gonna teach the kids at school? We’d definitely be seeing a lot more whining about how “Nobody wants to work anymore” lol.

[Lord Jade Cross]

Ive seen the same argument about "these fast food/minimum wage jobs are for kids, not something to make a career out of" thrown around and initially, it may sound like a valid point, except that its not only the types of jobs most readily available, but many times, they are the only jobs available and/or the only jobs you may be lucky enough to grab. 

 

Ive done hundreds of applications to various types of job locations, have all the qualifications but never get a single call or as it happened not too long ago when I applied to a warehouse/distribution job, the "manager" if he even was because the attitude left much to be said, looked at my resume which has various retail job descriptions, including working the warehouses areas, keeping inventory, preparring pallets to ship out, etc, and had the nerve to tell me "We only employ  people who really work" Lile what the hell was that even supposed to mean? I had tried over 4 times to get the job for that location alone. Same with other jobs; and then you see companies complaining about nobody wanting to work. How are we supposed to do that, if you dont provide jobs!? Its like the never ending cycle since I first started working

[MarRister]

On 5/10/2024 at 12:28 PM, uhtred said:

Unemployment figures in the US are very low.   Wages have (officially) kept up with inflation.   
I'm not saying its true, but see https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-purchasing-power-of-american-households   
Figure 4.  That is claiming that purchasing power (wage increase - inflation) increased between 2019 and 2023.

Other sources show similar:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/05/wages-outpacing-inflation

I know many people aren't seeing that in rea life, so what is going on.  Are the numbers calculated incorrectly?  Lies? 

What studies show that purchasing power is decreasing?   I'm not saying it isn't, I just can't find anything to support that

You keep looking at the past 5 years only or so, like everything was just hunky dory pre covid. Things accumulate over time worsening problems. Im pretty sure we already had this discussion in another thread where I linked about 6 different articles saying exactly what you claim there is seemingly no evidence of. 

 

"Just move" is not an answer to people's struggles and neither is telling them that the recent economic indicators say they should be doing just fine. 

 

Also not sure why you say people aren't moving. There has been huge migrations in my country from the stupidly expensive areas that just get more expensive. But the thing is this is now causing major problems in cheaper areas of the country. Housing prices and rent has exploded in areas that were considered cheap or at least reasonable and now the people that have been living there their whole lives are now struggling immensely. My city, which has not been an inexpensive place to live, but far more reasonable than other cities in this country with decent opportunities and we have had so many people move here it is driving rents and pricing up incredibly fast. If I wanted to try and transfer within my company to another city, they would likely only have positions available in those more expensive cities. If things get dire enough maybe I will be forced to move, but this is my home and where I have established friends and family and leaving is not so simple, so of course I'm going to try and figure out how to stay here if I can even if it may mean a lower quality of living as far as $$$ goes, but quality of living goes beyond just money too. 

[Sally]

The cost of living does not stay cheaper when many people move to another area.  In my incredibly expensive Seattle, people working in Seattle started moving slightly north and slightly south, but then the rents and house prices in those areas started increasing because people would pay them.  Now the people in those areas are not only paying rents almost as high as Seattle's, they're also spending hours in car or bus to get to their workplaces.  

[uhtred]

42 minutes ago, Sally said:

The cost of living does not stay cheaper when many people move to another area.  In my incredibly expensive Seattle, people working in Seattle started moving slightly north and slightly south, but then the rents and house prices in those areas started increasing because people would pay them.  Now the people in those areas are not only paying rents almost as high as Seattle's, they're also spending hours in car or bus to get to their workplaces.  

Yes, in Seattle, some companies that higher workers for high paying jobs moved in.  It brings revenue into an area, but increases rents.  I don't know a good solution to that. Seattle could have made it difficult for Amazon to move in but then they would have just gone somewhere else, along with the risk of Seattle turning into San Francisco with lots of empty businesses and likely serious problems in the future.

The overall problem is that no one really sets wages - companies pay what they have to, and as the economic environment changes, different skills become more or less varied.    If you have experience with AI coding now, you can make a fantastic amount of money, but if you are equally skilled in something that is not in demand, you will struggle.   I don't know a good way to guess what skill will be needed in the future. 

 

 

[Lord Jade Cross]

5 hours ago, uhtred said:

Yes, in Seattle, some companies that higher workers for high paying jobs moved in.  It brings revenue into an area, but increases rents.  I don't know a good solution to that. Seattle could have made it difficult for Amazon to move in but then they would have just gone somewhere else, along with the risk of Seattle turning into San Francisco with lots of empty businesses and likely serious problems in the future.

The overall problem is that no one really sets wages - companies pay what they have to, and as the economic environment changes, different skills become more or less varied.    If you have experience with AI coding now, you can make a fantastic amount of money, but if you are equally skilled in something that is not in demand, you will struggle.   I don't know a good way to guess what skill will be needed in the future. 

This is the thought that basically keeps me perpetually stuck as I wonder if I should try to change to a different field but have no clue if the time between now and later will result in owning a different degree/set of skills that wiñl end up being as useless as the ones I aqcuired that didnt lead anywhere 

[Sally]

6 hours ago, uhtred said:

the risk of Seattle turning into San Francisco with lots of empty businesses and likely serious problems in the future.

That has already happened.  Our downtown is full of large empty office buildings; that has not improved as people thought it would after the pandemic..  Corporations are laying people off. 

[uhtred]

25 minutes ago, Sally said:

That has already happened.  Our downtown is full of large empty office buildings; that has not improved as people thought it would after the pandemic..  Corporations are laying people off. 

I didn't realize that.  Not good.      Both layoffs (after all the stimulus money of covid dried up and we had to pay it back) and work from home eliminating a lot of income for downtowns is doing bad things to some cities.  No idea how to fix it
 

[uhtred]

2 hours ago, Lord Jade Cross said:

This is the thought that basically keeps me perpetually stuck as I wonder if I should try to change to a different field but have no clue if the time between now and later will result in owning a different degree/set of skills that wiñl end up being as useless as the ones I aqcuired that didnt lead anywhere 

There is now way to know what fields will be in demand in the future. When I started college, defense spending was big, healthcare relatively small. Computers were an interesting but small field (I remember when the entire computer industry passed the same revenue as the pantyhose industry).  Networking meant using Compuserve, and personal computers were touted as a good way to store recipes.  The space industry was certain to bounce back, since we would be doing a manned Mars mission by 1990 at the latest.  "Real" computers were IBM mainframes and always would be. 

By pure luck even though the field I ended up in was dying, it needed some of the same skills as one that was still hiring, so I'm OK until I retire. 


 

[Lord Jade Cross]

7 minutes ago, uhtred said:

I didn't realize that.  Not good.      Both layoffs (after all the stimulus money of covid dried up and we had to pay it back) and work from home eliminating a lot of income for downtowns is doing bad things to some cities.  No idea how to fix it
 

Chicago I believe is going through something similar 

 

3 minutes ago, uhtred said:

There is now way to know what fields will be in demand in the future. When I started college, defense spending was big, healthcare relatively small. Computers were an interesting but small field (I remember when the entire computer industry passed the same revenue as the pantyhose industry).  Networking meant using Compuserve, and personal computers were touted as a good way to store recipes.  The space industry was certain to bounce back, since we would be doing a manned Mars mission by 1990 at the latest.  "Real" computers were IBM mainframes and always would be. 

By pure luck even though the field I ended up in was dying, it needed some of the same skills as one that was still hiring, so I'm OK until I retire. 


 

Unfortunately, Im not sure if many of us in the current working generation will get to retire, at the rate things are going. While true that noone can predict the future, we are at a bigger disadvantage now where the market shifts far more quickly, you have to be really well situated and know when to move, where to move, and how soon to keep up. Im afraid that this will likely lead to higher suicides as people will grow ever more desperate trying to keep up

 

Currently AI and similar fields are growing, but how long until those get saturated?  

[Sally]

1 hour ago, uhtred said:

No idea how to fix it

The trouble with Washington State is that we have no income tax -- it was declared unconstitutional back in the 1900s.  Thus we rely upon property tax and sales tax to fund the state, and municipalities mainly rely upon sales tax.  The less people are financially able to buy stuff, the poorer the cities are; it just compounds the problem.

[daveb]

I tried a new dentist earlier this year - turned out their office is in a multi-story office building (4 or 5 floors, I think), with low occupancy. It felt weird.

 

I don't know the logistics or economics or anything, but it might be good if they could somehow convert some of the empty office space into housing. I mean, it might not be feasible or practical or have much chance of being done even if it were. It might mean buildings would have to be gutted or torn down completely and something new built. But if businesses don't need all of that space and people do need more housing it could be good (in a utopian pipe dream kind of way  ).

 

Or knock down some of those buildings and turn the blocks into parks and other amenities people do need/want.  

 

(yes, I recognize this is probably more in the realm of fantasy/sci-fi; hopefully not the gritty dystopian kind)

[Still]

1 hour ago, daveb said:

I don't know the logistics or economics or anything, but it might be good if they could somehow convert some of the empty office space into housing.

I think the main problem is many office buildings being in prime locations which means companies wouldn't give them up for cheap, so the upfront cost of turning them into housing would be steep.

[Sally]

1 hour ago, Still said:

I think the main problem is many office buildings being in prime locations which means companies wouldn't give them up for cheap, so the upfront cost of turning them into housing would be steep.

Yes, there is some talk about conversion to housing, but it is extremely expensive, basically using the building as a shell and rebuilding the interior.  And building owners who can afford to let the building sit empty are doing so, hoping that corporations/employees will come back.  

[Lord Jade Cross]

4 minutes ago, Sally said:

Yes, there is some talk about conversion to housing, but it is extremely expensive, basically using the building as a shell and rebuilding the interior.  And building owners who can afford to let the building sit empty are doing so, hoping that corporations/employees will come back.  

Alot of people arent as willing anymore to return to work after covid though

[uhtred]

I read a little on office conversion to housing a while back.  Its hard:  things are just set up very differently, plumbing, walls, electrical, everything.  

 

In future it might be nice for building codes to encourage / require multi-use design, I think it wouldn't be all that expensive as an initial build, but its really expensive to retrofit. 

[Sally]

The main problem with conversion is that office buildings have very different placement of plumbing, ventilation and heating, and electrical systems, plus most buildings have dense interior rooms without windows which would be useless for apartments.  It could actually be less expensive to raze the building and build anew than to retrofit, but no developer is going to take on the extra expense to raze when they can simply find "fresh" land on which to build.