1960
- Income
- $5,620
- Home
- $11,900
- Rent/year
- $852
- Public tuition
- $213
- Healthcare
- $146
- Childcare
- Not in dataset
- Owner basket
- Not in dataset
Years of Work
Measure the economy in time, not vibes.
CPI can tell you how a technical price index moved. Years of Work asks the harder question: how much of a household's life does it take to buy the basics of a stable American life?
Current owner basket
7.0 years
Latest populated Years of Work owner basket in the AFWH research table. It combines home, car, tuition, healthcare, and childcare against median household income.
The Years of Work Squeeze
Years of median household income needed to afford the American basket. Home, car, tuition, healthcare, and childcare. This is what the cost of living looks like when you measure it in life.
The comparison
The stable-life basket moved faster than the paycheck.
1980
- Income
- $17,010
- Home
- $63,700
- Rent/year
- $2,916
- Public tuition
- $804
- Healthcare
- $1,099
- Childcare
- Not in dataset
- Owner basket
- Not in dataset
2000
- Income
- $41,990
- Home
- $165,300
- Rent/year
- $7,224
- Public tuition
- $3,501
- Healthcare
- $4,844
- Childcare
- $6,600
- Owner basket
- 5.3 years
2023
- Income
- $80,610
- Home
- $429,000
- Rent/year
- $16,872
- Public tuition
- $9,834
- Healthcare
- $14,570
- Childcare
- $11,582
- Owner basket
- 7.0 years
Why it matters
People do not live inside aggregate inflation. They live inside rent, mortgage debt, medical bills, tuition, childcare, car payments, groceries, and the time left after all of that is paid.
What CPI misses
CPI is not useless as a price index, but it is a bad dashboard for whether a stable life, healthcare system, infrastructure buildout, or manufacturing base is actually affordable.
Where to go next
The time-cost chart tells us what happened to households. The money-flow and build-capacity sites explain where the money went and what has to be rebuilt.
What comes next
Elect a Congress that understands this.
The affordability crisis will not be solved by asking captured markets to behave better. We need people in Congress who understand public competition, public capacity, and what it takes to lower the real cost of living.