62k salary in a medium COL city. $1500/mo rent. Single, living alone. It is right at the 1/3rd of income limit, which I kind of wanted to avoid but rent went up >30% in my city in the last year and having roommates is very risky for quality of life at this point (AKA sleep). It was difficult to find this place. I will be able to save modestly, while eating out 1-2x/month, visiting family across the country maybe 2x/year. I chose to highly rank an affordable city with a favorable resident income, and moonlighting availability. I acknowledge I am amongst the most ideal fiancial situation you can get (short of ongoing familial financial support). For someone like me who is financially motivated and with relatively few costs/very limited lifestyle creep (I don't have a dishwasher, a TV, a gaming system) to be able to save just a little, I believe is indicative of a true problem.
For all of you "we made it work in my day!!!" people, I can begin to relate to how you feel, as a millennial now witnessing behavior of typical zoomers. I think (and hope) a lot of the current worker's rights thinking in medicine is grounded in the mindset that corporations just suck. In my lifetime they've ruined the internet/socialization of young people, raided the US govt's VA and funds for a war via private contracting, poisoned minds via infotainment, contributed to deteriorating population health via both food and drug shortcuts and advertising, persisted in destruction of the environment, are ruining healthcare, and largely abandonded loyalty to employees. There is probably a lot less deference towards employers as a result, as there should be. Also, though I think there are a few factors that make things different than say 20 years ago. The current average resident salary is truly exploitative. I don't think the spending habits of young people is the issue to focus on. It is peanuts compared to the exploitation we go through.
1. The cost of everything has gone up disproportionately to the increase in income (not just the rent vs income equation). I don't think it stretches as far as it used to.
2. Students are on average older. I will be mid 30s when graduating residency, for example. I have grinded through so many absolute crap apartments for the last decade (getting into med school took me a while- I lived in a 150 sq ft apt for years), and always took pride in preventing lifestyle creep... but as people age they tend to want a quiet place to sleep, close to work, without bugs. They also probably have more family on average given the increased age.
3. For non-PGY-1s, debt burden/payments is way more significant than it used to be. I have 250k after 15k assistance during school from family due to a bit leftover from an undergrad plan.
4. There is a more direct comparator to what a corporation values a resident's work at. Midlevels, who often operate in some type of similar capacity as a resident. They are less trained, make a lot more, and work a lot less. In addition to this, CMS PAYS somewhere in the ballpark of 90-110k per resident per year. The exploitation is much clearer due to this.
The last thought I'd like to write down is that generations "going soft" and subsequently bankrupting society of something (fiscal responsibility or morality) is a concept I don't totally wholesale disagree with... but wanting residents --who have spent their entire lives working very hard who are also creating a ton of value for a hospital system (on average)-- to be happy with "what they have", is idiotic. Even if you went through worse. These are probably the people in society you should worry the LEAST about with regards to generational laziness or whatever. Everything is more competitive than 20 years ago (there are billions more people), and we worked on average harder to get here than prior students. I read every day on here about how corporations are screwing you over in anesthesiology. Their exploited resident employees are also not the problem.