Silent Depression
A popular claim that young people today face affordability problems as bad as the 1930s, even without mass unemployment.
The silent depression is an idea that spread on social media around 2023. Its argument: when you compare house prices, rent, education and healthcare with wages, many young people are as squeezed as their great-grandparents were in the Great Depression, only it is "silent" because unemployment is low and shops are full.
Economists push back that living standards on most measures are far higher than in the 1930s. But the phrase captures a real feeling about affordability that shows up in politics and consumer sentiment, and that is why it is worth knowing.
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