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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

I'd imagine it mostly has to do with the giant COL increase over the last 12 to 18 months. Employers typically don't just hand out 20% raises, so everyone is out looking for more money.

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Related, pay has gone up for many roles as companies get desperate to hire and many companies have a logical flaw in how they value current employees. They won’t raise current employees wages to meet the new price they would pay for someone new so they lose them and pay that price anyway to the next person (then complain about attrition).

Yep...

Any CEO that complains about losing talent, but then locks the total salaries budget at no more than 3-5% year over year growth is not serious about talent retention...

Very true. And so the common idea among SWE's - the fastest way to a raise is to switch jobs.

Inflation, or even fear of inflation, is going to be a big factor.

I see many people trying to spin this as a unilateral win for workers, but the subtext is that many of them are afraid that they have no choice but to seek higher wages just to keep up with their expenses.

Agreed. One friend of mine, who makes plenty, decided to go job searching because raises this year for that company maxed out at 10%. It might sound petty in normal times, but costs for a lot of people have gone up by a lot more than 10% in the last year.

My rent alone went up something like 20%. Look at gas. Or wood. Or food. It's like watching money slowly disappear. Here's hoping it really is transitory.

>My rent alone went up something like 20%.

Your example is certainly atypical. BLS says rent is up 1.9% YOY.

> Look at gas

Mostly correct, up 42% YOY.

> Or wood

Can't find the BLS stats for this, probably because the amount of lumber the median household buys is approximately zero.

> Or food

BLS says it's up 2.6% YOY. Are you sure something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic isn't messing with your perception?

Housing in my area of the US is booming. Understandably, that means in others, it's doing the opposite, so it probably washes out.

As for wood, I agree not everyone is out buying lumber. But that affects lots of things. Have you priced out a shed, fixing a deck, or new run of fence? It also apparently affects furniture and such to some degree. New home builders near me were putting huge 'lumber' addendums on their previous pricing.

Food is a little trickier. Grocery just 'feels' more expensive, but admittedly, I don't have any data to back that up. I can certainly cede that point.

Lumber was up a lot last year, but now here (PNW) it’s cheaper than pre-pandemic prices. 2x4x8 were $3.70 at Home Depot last week, which is rather cheap.

Lumber as a commodity is almost back to pre-pandemic levels.

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/lbs

It was $2.5 for 2x4 pre-pandemic, so still has a room to go down :-)

We are planning on moving and have done decent bit of research. In Fremont, rents have fallen, while smaller areas the rents are going up. In our apartment complex there are numerous empty apartments and a 2BR is 2100$. That's from 2400$ approx one year ago. We are looking at Reno and folks there say a similar 2BR house has gone up from 1200 to 1500. Now we are wondering if the savings is worth the lack of opportunity!!!

So rents in large metros are going down and rents in small areas are going up.

Yeah, my rent went up 0% this year for the first time ever.

Bls rent probably is buffered out by areas of low economic growth and mobility so you don’t see big city rents represented well

Let's try the top 3 metropolitan areas in the US then.

New York-Newark-Jersey City: down 0.2% YOY

Los Angeles area: up 0.8% YOY

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin: up 2.9% YOY

all figures from https://www.bls.gov/regions/subjects/consumer-price-indexes....

I think it's more like rents for wealthy people went up, because wealthy people took no income hit during covid. So not only did rents continue to rise as usual for them, but they lost competition at the low end from the less wealthy spending beyond their means. I'd expect to see rents bifurcate. Without the huge stimulus, I'd have expected asset prices to have raced up, too, as the stock market failed.

By wealthy, I mean top 10-15% of salaries, not any of the definitions that people in the top 10-15% of salaries cook up to make themselves seem working class.

I think person you're replying to has it backwards. The big metros are where people are leaving. Look at rent and housing prices in any mid size city. Take Knoxville, or Orlando, or Louisville, or KC.

Every rental agreement I've had says "rent goes up 5% at renewal" which was yearly.

> Mostly correct, up 42% YOY.

How is that only "mostly" correct?

>> for that company maxed out at 10%

That is high, many companies were still 3-5% in 2021, hard to predict what 2022 will look like but I am not expecting much in as many companies seem to not understand that is happening in the market...

Why did your rent go up. It went down in the city I live. Everyone moves further out and no one moves in

I don't live in a major city. I unfortunately live in an area people are 'fleeing' to.

What COL increase? My spending went down because of remote working.

And you speak as if everyone lives paycheck to paycheck. Tech workers definitely don’t

> you speak as if

You speak like your personal experience is everybody's. Comes off as pretty arrogant.

i only need my personal exeprience to demonstrate (not prove) that everybody isn't the same, which is exactly what you're saying

The parent comment paints the picture that everyone is experiencing financial hardship owing to worldwide cost of living surge (when did that happen?) and that people look for a new job as soon at cost of living increases as if that is how career decisions are often made (solely to keep up with inflation)

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