Across the rich, English-speaking world, the math of a “good job” has quietly stopped working. Median household income used to mean the ability to cover rent or a mortgage, keep the lights on, raise kids, and still put something away for the future. In North America, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, that assumption has slipped out from under people without the language to describe what changed. Median incomes are still high by global standards, but they are now trapped inside housing markets and cost-of-living structures that convert almost every raise into someone else’s asset price. In the meantime, countries that rarely dominate Anglophone career fantasies, such as France and Australia, are showing that it is still possible to earn, save, and buy a home without treating each pay period as a cliff edge.
The breakdown is easiest to see when salaries and housing sit in the same frame. In the United States, the Census Bureau reports that median household income in 2023 was roughly $74,600, down in real terms from the pre-pandemic peak once inflation is factored in. Canada’s median disposable household income sits lower in absolute dollars but similar in purchasing power; harmonized figures put median equivalised disposable income around the high $30,000s to low $40,000s in US dollars, with Canada clustered not far behind the US in the global rankings. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the same OECD lens shows median disposable household income running in the mid-$30,000s to low-$40,000s in dollar terms, leaving all four countries broadly in the same band: rich by world standards, but not meaningfully out of line with one another. On paper, those incomes should support a reasonable life. The problem is that housing and essentials in these countries have outrun those salaries so thoroughly that the “median” is now a survival number rather than a platform for building anything.
Housing is where the illusion of livability dies. Demographia’s 2024 and 2025 International Housing Affordability reports use the “median multiple,” the ratio of median house price to median household income, to classify markets. A multiple of 3.0 or less is considered affordable; between 3.1 and 4.0 is moderately unaffordable; 4.1 to 5.0 is seriously unaffordable; and 5.1 and above is severely unaffordable. In the latest editions, major markets across the US, Canada, the UK, and Ireland overwhelmingly sit in the “seriously” or “severely” unaffordable brackets. Demographia notes that middle-income households in many large metros now face median multiples in the range of 7 to 9 or higher, levels that “did not exist just over three decades ago” and are essentially impossible to finance for ordinary borrowers without extreme leverage or help from family. Statista’s price-to-income ratio index tells the same story at the national level, finding that by 2023–2024, countries like Canada and the United States were sitting above 130 index points, meaning that house price growth has outpaced income growth by more than 30 percent since 2015, with the OECD average at about 118. If you are earning a median salary in these places, you are competing in a housing arena that no longer recognizes you as the intended buyer.
When incomes and housing costs diverge like that, savings become a rounding error. Net household saving rates show how much disposable income households manage to keep after consumption. OECD figures and summaries of recent data paint a stark picture. For years, countries like Switzerland, France, and Germany have posted double-digit household saving rates, while Anglophone peers hover near zero. One analysis of OECD data pointed out that Switzerland’s household saving rate sat around 19 percent in 2022, with France near 11 percent, whereas the United Kingdom was around 2 percent and Canada about 2 percent in the same period; the United States, helped by pandemic stimulus, floated higher at roughly 9 percent but has since drifted back toward its long-term single-digit norms. Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reports that Irish households have recently saved about 13.8 percent of their disposable income on average, roughly in line with their own pre-pandemic behavior but now below the euro-area average of around 14.7 percent as countries like France and Germany increased their saving rates after 2020. The pattern is consistent: in the US, Canada, and the UK, median households spend nearly everything they bring in; in much of continental Europe and in Australia, the typical household still has some structural capacity to save.
The lived reality under those ratios looks like this. A median US household bringing in around $75,000 before tax might see $55,000 to $60,000 after federal, state, and payroll deductions, depending on location and benefits. In many metropolitan areas, a modest three-bedroom rental will cost $2,000 a month or more, consuming about half of net income on its own; in expensive cities, that figure pushes toward $3,000. Parallel numbers exist in Canada, where a typical household with disposable income around 60,000 Canadian dollars faces rents or mortgage payments that can easily run $2,000 to $2,500 per month in or near major job centers. In the UK, an equivalised median disposable income around £32,000–£35,000 leaves a take-home of roughly £2,000 to £2,300 a month after tax for a single earner, while median private rents in cities like London or Dublin can devour 50 to 60 percent of that without blinking. Once you layer in transportation, utilities, food, childcare, and basic insurance, the space for savings collapses to maybe a low single-digit percentage of income for many families, and that is before you introduce student loans or other consumer debt.
In theory, dual-income households should be able to escape this trap, but the structure of housing markets in these countries has already priced in the expectation that everyone will bring two full salaries to the table. Demographia and related analyses emphasize that middle-income households once could buy median homes with single incomes in many markets, whereas today, even two median incomes struggle to reach the threshold as multiples climb above 5 or 6. That has two corrosive effects. First, it delays or prevents household formation entirely, keeping people in flatshares or back in their childhood bedrooms into their thirties and forties. Second, it turns the decision to have children into a direct threat to housing security, because one partner stepping back from full-time work can instantly make homeownership unattainable or unsustainable. When the only stable way to own is to have two high earners with no interruptions, the system is quietly telling you that raising kids and maintaining any financial slack are incompatible goals.
The obvious question is why people do not simply move to cheaper areas within these countries, and some do. Yet even here, the map has narrowed. Demographia’s city-level breakdown shows that formerly affordable smaller markets in the United States, Canada, the UK, and Ireland have steadily climbed into the unaffordable categories as demand spills over from superstar cities and land-use rules choke supply. A national Statista index warning that both Canada and the US have house-price-to-income indices above 130 confirms that this is no longer just a downtown Manhattan or central London problem; it is a national pattern of prices outrunning wages. Commuting from genuinely affordable places often means trading financial stress for time poverty, with multi-hour daily journeys that erode mental health and family life. For families without generational wealth or remote-work options, the choice is between being house poor and time poor—or giving up on ownership altogether.
Given this environment, the idea that median salaries in these Anglophone countries naturally permit saving is more branding than truth. Savings behavior data make clear that in the United Kingdom, household saving rates were close to zero or even negative in some recent years, meaning that the average household was either breaking even or dipping into reserves just to maintain its standard of living. In Canada, household saving has hovered in the low single digits, far below levels associated with robust financial resilience. Even in the US, where a higher aggregate saving rate has been recorded at times, the distribution is uneven: higher-income households accumulate assets, while large swaths of the middle and lower middle classes report having little or no emergency savings. People are not failing to save because they lack discipline; they are scraping along the floor of a budget where housing has already eaten the margin.
If the core problem is that salaries do not buy the future they used to, the natural response is to look for places where they still do. On that front, France and Australia stand out as examples that are flawed but structurally less hostile to ordinary savers. France is not cheap, especially in Paris, but French households have resumed and even increased their saving rates since the pandemic. Irish statistical comparisons show that while Ireland’s household saving rate is around 13.8 percent, the euro area average is higher, and specific countries such as France and Germany are now above their pre-pandemic saving levels, with Germany at roughly 19.6 percent and the euro area near 14.7 percent. OECD-based charts compiled by others show France around an 11 percent household saving rate in 2022, compared to roughly 2 percent in the UK and about 2 percent in Canada. That difference is not a rounding error; it is the structural gap between a system in which a median household can, in normal years, put aside a month or two of expenses, and a system in which the average family is one job loss away from crisis.
Australia, too, looks relatively livable when you zoom out, even though specific cities like Sydney and Melbourne show severe housing stress. Demographia’s work on median multiples routinely flags some Australian metros as severely unaffordable, but at the national level, average household saving rates have historically been stronger than in Canada or the UK, and comparable analyses have put Australia’s household saving rate around 12 percent in recent years, well above the UK and Canada and closer to high-saving peers. Wages in Australia, when adjusted for cost of living, remain robust; average and median earnings rank near the top of global tables, and the social safety net provides more predictable floors for health and basic services than in North America. It is still hard to buy in Sydney without help, but a median household in a non-superstar Australian city has a better chance of simultaneously paying a mortgage, maintaining an emergency fund, and saving for retirement than its counterpart in Toronto or London.
None of this means France or Australia are utopias, or that the only solution is to emigrate. It does, however, make the next wave of responses in the Anglophone world more predictable. When salaries cannot stretch to cover both housing and saving, households start rewriting their assumptions. One of the most powerful but under-acknowledged tools is a return to multi-generational living. Bringing three or more adult incomes under one roof changes the math in a way no budgeting app can. In Ireland, where median weekly earnings for Irish nationals are about €728—around €37,800 per year if you assume 52 weeks of work—combining the incomes of two or three adults becomes the only plausible path to buying in many markets, especially when the national homeownership rate sits near 70 percent and younger cohorts are increasingly locked out. Similar dynamics play out in Canada, where multi-adult households can share both mortgage burdens and the escalating cost of utilities and food, making it possible to save even when individual incomes lag local prices.
Multi-income strategies can also operate within nuclear families. Couples who consciously alternate whose career is front-loaded may decide to spend five years optimizing for one partner’s high earning potential—chasing promotions, geographic moves, or overseas assignments in more favorable systems like France or Australia—while the other provides stability and care work, then switch. In macro statistics, this still shows up as two incomes and a household that maybe manages a mid single-digit saving rate, but at the micro level it can produce periods where the household saves aggressively and uses that capital to buy property in a cheaper region, pay down debt, or invest in child care that frees up more hours. The underlying constraint does not disappear, but the family stops pretending that a static median salary will ever spontaneously create a surplus.
Policy shifts are the other pillar of any serious solution, though individuals cannot wait for them. Demographia and related work argue that a large share of housing unaffordability in countries like the US, Canada, the UK, and Ireland comes from land-use policies that artificially restrict supply, driving up land prices and making homeownership unattainable for many middle-income households. Easing zoning restrictions, encouraging medium-density development, and treating housing as infrastructure rather than an investment vehicle could, over time, bring the median multiple back toward the 3.0 to 4.0 range in more markets. Tax policy can also be used to rebalance incentives away from speculative property and toward productive investment, reducing the pressure that every extra dollar of salary immediately becomes another dollar of bidding power in a rigged housing auction. The problem is that these measures take years to show up in household budgets, and the cohort currently in their thirties and forties cannot rebuild those years.
For people already working in the US, Canada, the UK, or Ireland, the most honest frame may be this: a median salary in these countries will increasingly cover today but not tomorrow unless you combine it with something else—another salary, another household, or another country. The statistics are blunt. National and metro-level price-to-income ratios show housing sprinting away from incomes. Household saving rates in the UK and Canada hover near the floor of the OECD tables, signaling that the average household is barely staying afloat. In the euro area, particularly in places like France, households have resumed saving at higher rates than before the pandemic, suggesting that their income and cost structures still leave some room for a future. Australia, while facing a nasty affordability problem in specific cities, still manages national saving and income dynamics that give median households more breathing room than many Anglophone peers.
In that context, “salaries without futures” is not a slogan; it is a description of what the numbers already say. A paycheque in North America, Canada, the UK, or Ireland will still buy groceries and a streaming subscription. It may still cover rent if you are willing to trade space and security for cost. But unless you layer those salaries with structural advantages or deliberate strategies—multi-generational households, multi-income planning, or strategic relocation to systems where the saving rate is not an accident—you are being asked to live inside an economy that consumes everything you earn and gives you no compounding in return. The people who can will leave, for France or Australia or anywhere else that still lets median workers keep a slice of tomorrow. Those who cannot will be left feeding salaries into an engine that was never designed to let them off the belt.