Money, Time, and Vancouver: Why $66/Hour Isn’t the Whole Story

 💰 Money, Time, and Vancouver: Why $66/Hour Isn’t the Whole Story

Lately, there’s been a viral claim going around saying that in 2025, we’d need to earn $66 an hour just to have the same buying power our parents, older siblings, and grandparents (especially Baby Boomers) enjoyed in the 1970s.

Sounds shocking, right? But is it true—especially here in Vancouver, BC? The short answer: the number comes from U.S. data, and for Vancouver, it’s even more complicated.

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📈 What Inflation Alone Tells Us

If we just look at general price inflation in Canada:

• $1 in 1970 = about $7.91 in 2025
  (That’s a 690.9% increase in prices, based on Statistics Canada CPI data.)
• So, if someone made $10/hour in 1970, the inflation-adjusted equivalent would be about $79/hour today.

But here’s the catch: general inflation doesn’t capture housing—and housing is where Vancouver’s affordability problem really explodes.

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🏠 Housing Affordability: Vancouver’s Reality

Let’s go back in time:

• In 1971, Vancouver homes cost about $15–$20 per square foot. Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $113 today.
• In 2025, similar homes are going for $1,200+ per square foot—over 10× higher, even after adjusting for inflation.
• Back then, the median home price-to-income ratio was about 2.9—a household could buy a home for roughly three years of income.
• Today, that ratio is around 24.4—meaning you’d need more than 24 years’ worth of income to buy a home at today’s prices.

This puts Vancouver in the same league as Hong Kong and Sydney for the title of “least affordable housing markets in the world.”

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🔍 So Where Does $66/Hour Come From?

That figure is mainly from U.S.-based viral posts comparing historic housing prices to wages.
When you apply that logic to Vancouver, the reality is even starker—if you wanted the same home-buying power as a middle-class family in the 1970s, you’d probably need an hourly wage well above $66/hour.

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💡 The Takeaway

• General cost of living: Wages in BC would need to be roughly 8× higher than 1970 to match inflation.
• Housing: Vancouver’s affordability has worsened far beyond inflation—by more than 800% in terms of price-to-income ratio.
• The $66/hr number grabs attention, but for Vancouver, the real gap between wages and costs is bigger—and housing is the main driver.

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Final thought:
When our parents or grandparents bought homes in the 1970s, they often did so on a single income. Today, even with two incomes, many households in Vancouver can’t get close to the housing market without massive debt or outside help. This isn’t just about nostalgia—it’s about recognizing that affordability isn’t a personal failure. The math has changed, and so must the policies.