Renting is often more expensive monthly than owning a home. Obviously this differs by area, but particularly as you get out of the city, homes get downright inexpensive.
In a lot of cities, new housing development is deliberately surpressed, which in turn causes rent to skyrocket. In other areas, where land is still cheap, its very often cheaper (in the long run, maybe 10-20 years) to just get a mortgage to buy or build a house because newer housing stock is still being put into the system to which helps regulate the max price landlords can get away with before people just start building their own homes or buying new one from developers.
I don’t think this is true at the moment (with interest rates) or in cities, as a rule. A 2-bedroom apartment rents for $3K but sells for $1M+ where I live in the Boston area, so a mortgage payment would be at least double our rent :(
I’m at the point where I very much want to own a home - emotionally - but it’s hard to justify financially.
I’ve worked 2 manufacturing jobs in the past 2 years, and know others that work at other factories. We have not received raises that track with inflation, ever. I know this is anecdotal, but lived experiences often differ to what stats are cited.
I have never received an inflation beating raise, not once in my life, and I’m 50 years old. The only way to get good raises is to job hop. And anyway, 3%CPI? Have they done any food shopping in the past year?
Saw a store selling a gallon of milk for $7. Was an “upscale” grocery store, but come on. Half a load of bread from the bakery was $8. Where is the other half of my bread?! I walked out
In my 40’s and pretty similar experience. Raises are always 3-5%, with several years where they didn’t even meet that. Hell, I remember one year having manager take me out to lunch and explain to me that the company wasn’t doing any raises that year. The following year I had a new job at ~20% higher salary. And companies wonder why workers have no loyalty anymore. In the end, the only thing that has kept my salary rising faster than inflation is to job hop every 3-5 years. I’d rather not. Hell, I like the company I’m at now and they talk a fantastic game about building a long term career. We’ll see how that pans out come raise time.
I take any long-term pipe dreams with a grain of salt nowadays. I spent 3 years “just six more months” at a time because I believed the owner of the company. Never again.
There have been very few changes, and none in the last few years. And when they made changes last they were small changes that only make the score more accurate:
Changes to the CPI establishment frame (2019-2020)
•Replaced Telephone Point-of-Purchase Survey (TPOPS) as source of retail establishment frame with data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE)
•Eliminated redundancies and inefficiencies in survey operations and reduced household burden Use of Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages business registry to refine the location and address data from the CE
• Use of Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages business registry to refine the location and address data from the CE
“It’s wrong and most of use know it.” I don’t think most of anyone knows it. And the ones who do are misinformed, repeating false internet narratives without doing any sort of fact checking.
You obviously didn’t read your own article. It dismantles the argument that the calculation is vastly changed, and acknowledges a change in how housing prices are weighted in 1983 might change the equation by 1 point for some people looking to buy a home. Not in the “last two years,” as stated by the comment above.
Owners’ equivalent rent of residences (OER) has nothing to do with the headline CPI numbers. The article you’re referring to literally cites the BLS website, and talks about a separate number not covered by any headlines or indexes in this post.
You are confusing yourself. That article sites the BLS website to explain the differences between core and super core indexes. Both are publicly available, and neither are new. The formula for either number hasn’t changed significantly in decades (1983 when housing price weight was changed).
Raises for lower-income workers were particularly strong in early 2023. Restaurants, hotels and similar businesses hired at a brisk pace to cater to customers eager for services that were limited initially in the Covid-19 pandemic. While leisure and hospitality employment gains have slowed in recent months, workers in the industry saw their hourly pay rise faster than overall wage growth and inflation.
Wages for manufacturing and business-services workers are also outpacing inflation. Pay gains have been narrower in the tech-heavy information sector, where several large companies have cut staff.
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