Nobody plans to rent forever. The usual advice is that you save the deposit and then you buy — so the deposit is treated as the obstacle, and saving is treated as the test you passed or failed.
It is not the test. The income a lender needs from you already assumes the deposit is in the bank. In October 2019 one median full-time wage came within $2,885 of it. Today the same wage is short by $57,079. Your pay rose 34% over those years. The hurdle needed 88%.
Put the other way: the typical American home took 1.06 median incomes in 2019. It now takes 1.88. Two median full-time earners bring $130,104 and clear it by $7,973.
Built 2 October 2026 from the data on the numbers page, which lists every series and its code.
Film one · 8:35
The Flood, then the Freeze: where the new money went, and why the income a lender asks for rose so much further than pay. The renter's part starts at 4:49.
The gap is 20 times what it was in 2019.
In wages rather than dollars it went from 1.34 years of median full-time pay to 1.60. This is the obstacle everyone is told to attack, and it is the only one of the two that saving can touch at all — which is exactly what makes the station above it the one that decides the outcome.
This is asking rent — what it costs to sign a lease now, not the average across everyone already sitting in one. Those are two different numbers and this site quotes both, because they measure different people: the index describes a population and this one describes a decision. If you are moving, this is the number you meet.
The eleven are named things in the sizes they are sold in — a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, a pound of coffee — one of each, held still and priced twice. Pay here is gross; a raise is taxed at the margin, so the middle bar flatters the comparison rather than exaggerating it. The receipt has every line and every series code, and it is the page every household on this site passes through: the renter, the family that cannot move, the retiree who cannot downsize. See the receipt →
It does not say renting is fine. It is not a consolation, and the fact that renting is the cheaper month right now is not on this page, because nobody wants to rent forever and being told the fallback is affordable is not an answer to being locked out of the thing you wanted.
It does not say whose fault this is. Every figure here is a published series and none of them names a culprit. The household that signed in 2019 is not the reason the household signing today cannot — the arithmetic changed underneath both of them, and that is what the film is about.
Pay is gross everywhere on this page, because there is no published series for a median full-time worker's take-home. A raise is taxed at the margin, so every comparison here understates the squeeze rather than overstating it. If that ever gets its own page, it will be built from published tax rules with the assumptions named, like the twenty percent and the 28% of gross.
The eleven things on the receipt are the part that hits every household on this site at once — the renter, the family that cannot move, the retiree who cannot downsize. It is the one page all of them share. See the receipt →
Found something that does not add up? Say so in the comments on the film, and cite the series. Corrections get published on the numbers page, with the date.