Eggs a dozen
5.5 minutes 8.1 minutes
costs more work than in 1985 · ×1.47
1980 peak 2025 · 20252025
$0.80 in 1985 · $4.25 today · $2.41 in today's dollars
Cost · observed
What does it cost, in hours of your life?
A price is easier to feel as time than as money. Everything below is the published price divided by the wage of the year it was paid — so no inflation adjustment is applied, and none is needed.
Observed published series · nothing here is simulated · every figure links to its publisher
Observed Census median price and income · Freddie Mac 30-year rate
What buying a house cost
A 20% deposit and a 30-year fixed at that year's going rate, against that year's median household income. The line is the share of income the payment took, every year from 1984 to 2024.
1984 peak 1984 · 20242024
Peak burden 40% in 1984. Both the price and the rate move this line, and they have moved in opposite directions at times — 1984's 13.88% rate made a $79,950 house cost 40% of income, while 2024's 6.72% rate on $418,975 costs 31%.
1984
$79,950
- Mortgage rate
- 13.88%
- Monthly payment
- $752
- Share of median income
- 40% · cost burdened
- Deposit, in months of income
- 8.6
2024
$418,975
- Mortgage rate
- 6.72%
- Monthly payment
- $2,167
- Share of median income
- 31% · cost burdened
- Deposit, in months of income
- 12.0
What this leaves out. Property tax, insurance and PMI are excluded — no comparable national series runs the whole period, and inventing one would be worse than omitting it. Every year here is therefore a floor, understated by roughly the same amount, so the trend holds even though the level is low. The Atlanta Fed's Home Ownership Affordability Monitor includes those costs if you need the true level.
Check it: Median sales price ↗ 30-year rate ↗ Median household income ↗
Observed BLS average price series, actual dollars
Everyday things, in hours of work
Price divided by that year's average hourly wage. No inflation adjustment is applied or needed — the wage does that work. Most of these take less of a working life than they used to.
Bread a loaf
3.8 minutes 3.6 minutes
costs less work than in 1985 · ×0.94
1980 peak 2008 · 20252025
$0.55 in 1985 · $1.87 today · $1.65 in today's dollars
Milk a gallon
13 minutes 7.8 minutes
costs less work than in 1996 · ×0.60
1996 peak 1996 · 20252025
$2.62 in 1996 · $4.07 today · $5.38 in today's dollars
Gasoline a gallon
8.3 minutes 6.2 minutes
costs less work than in 1985 · ×0.75
1976 peak 1981 · 20252025
$1.20 in 1985 · $3.26 today · $3.60 in today's dollars
Electricity a kilowatt-hour
33 seconds 21 seconds
costs less work than in 1985 · ×0.64
1979 peak 1984 · 20252025
$0.08 in 1985 · $0.18 today · $0.24 in today's dollars
Coffee a pound
18 minutes 16 minutes
costs less work than in 1985 · ×0.88
1980 peak 1980 · 20252025
$2.58 in 1985 · $8.18 today · $7.72 in today's dollars
How to read this, and what it cannot tell you
Three lenses disagree on purpose
The sticker price, the CPI-adjusted price, and the hours of work often move in opposite directions. Showing one and calling it the answer is how a page like this becomes an argument. The hours are led with because they need no inflation adjustment at all.
Why not just adjust for inflation
Because economists do not agree on the adjustment. The Boskin Commission found CPI overstated inflation by about 1.1 points a year; a substantial counter-literature argues the changes made since then understate it. A time price divides today's price by today's wage and sidesteps the dispute entirely.
What a time price hides
It credits wage growth, so it says nothing about who received that growth. It uses one worker's hour, not a household's. And it cannot see quality: a 2025 car is not a 1964 car, and no division fixes that.
This is observed, not modeled
Every figure here is a published series, linked to its publisher beside the number. Nothing on this page is simulated. That is the opposite of the rest of Pheme, and the distinction is the point.
Wage denominator: Average hourly earnings ↗ · price level: CPI ↗ · data 1964–2025 via FRED ↗.