´╗┐In 1984, the year I was born, a house in Toronto cost $96,000. Tuition cost $1000 a year, with many degrees lasting three years, and the average family income, after taxes, was $48,500.
Today, these numbers seem incomprehensible. The average family income has increased to $60,000, while the costs of living have skyrocketed. The average home in Toronto, for example, would cost just over $194,000, if inflation were the only factor. In reality, the average price today is over $504,000. (This means that a house would have cost a family two times its annual income in 1984, compared to six times their income today.) The same, disheartening comparison can be made for tuition: $2,028 per year with just inflation, but actually $5,366.
Following up on my last article, in which I said that post-secondary education is essentially mandatory yet problematic, it's no wonder that student debts are getting out of hand.
The federal government is writing off $231 million this year in unpaid student loans, stating in their spending supplement that the amounts being written off are debts for which all reasonable efforts to collect the amounts owed have been exhausted. This is after the $312 million written off last year, meaning over 140,000 debts are being erased.
While it's easy to call these former students freeloaders or delinquents, they are a drop in the bucket of people struggling with student loans. It's estimated that one in three student loans have defaulted. According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the average student debt is nearly $27,000, with most students taking ten years to pay off their loans, according to the Canada Student Loan Program.
This weight of student debt paired with the lack of sturdy, well-paying work for young people is beginning to cause problems for a number of markets. Because Gen Ys are spending years (or, quite possibly, over a decade) finding reasonable work and paying off student loans, many are not thinking of larger purchases, like buying a house.
In the US, where student debt is the second-highest behind mortgage debt, a recent Pew Research Center study showed the number of Americans under 35 who own their home fell from 40 to 34 per cent between 2007 and 2011. Car ownership also fell 12 per cent in the same span of time.
If this job freeze and looming debt aren't solved, spending will surely continue to decline, as young people pinch and prioritize every needed penny.
On the (albeit hard-to-see) upside, young people today are facing a lower (but still high) unemployment rate of 13.9 per cent today, four points lower than it was in 1984. And once Gen Y gets to buying homes, they'll see a lower mortgage rate and cheaper vehicles.
The problem with lower mortgage rates and lower car prices is that Gen Y won't see them (or care about them) for years, yet the older generation is using points like these to drive home that young people need to stop complaining and see what's available to them. The stats above, however, show that Gen Y is trapped, and it may only be with the aid and understanding of older generations that Canada's youth will have a fair shot at building their lives.
Related: Find out more about how Gen Y is surviving by job hopping, and how to save money by doing your own taxes.

James Michael McDonald is the editor of Jobpostings Magazine and jobpostings.ca. He has passions for human rights, gaming, and the Oxford Comma. Follow him on Twitter @mcjamdonald