St Onge says Gen Z faces Depression-era housing crisis
- Gen Z faces mortgage costs requiring $112k salary but earns a median $45k.
- The HR industry drains $3 trillion annually while harming corporate performance.
- The S&P 500 shrugs off oil shocks because tech now comprises half the index.
Gen Z is facing the worst housing affordability crisis since the Great Depression. On the Peter St Onge Podcast, economist Peter St Onge laid out the stark math: the salary needed to qualify for a mortgage has ballooned to $112,000, while the median income for the generation is only $45,000. The result is a structural wall that has pushed one-third of young adults back into their parents' homes and driven fertility rates to a record low of 1.7 children per woman.
The fallout extends beyond homeownership. St Onge argues that the "college wage premium" has halved since 1960, leaving graduates to carry $40,000 in debt into entry-level jobs that AI is automating.
"Eighty-one percent of Gen Z rates the economy as bad or terrible."
Peter St Onge, Peter St Onge Podcast
Meanwhile, corporate America is burdened by its own inefficiency. St Onge described the human resources industry as an $88 billion "tapeworm," citing research that shows it contributes to $3 trillion in lost annual output and a one-third drop in productivity. He pointed to Silicon Valley firms like Bolt firing their entire HR departments as a leading indicator, arguing such administrative layers prioritize ideological compliance over performance.
This corporate bloat compounds the generational squeeze, siphoning an estimated $10,000 in lost wages from every American worker. The market, however, has grown indifferent to another traditional pressure point: geopolitics. Despite predictions of $240 oil from the Iran conflict, the S&P 500 is up 8.5% since the war began. St Onge attributes this to a fundamental shift - where tech was 5% of the index in the 1970s, it is now 50%, making the market less sensitive to oil shocks and physical supply chains.
The generational wealth gap isn't just a personal finance issue; it's a threat to social stability. Survival, St Onge argues, will require Gen Z to unlearn the "learned helplessness" of traditional education and reskill for the demands of an AI-dominated, infrastructure-heavy economy.
"Studies show diversity training reduces trust and can lower the share of women and minorities in management."
Peter St Onge, Peter St Onge Podcast