Boomers don't know how hard the young have it

Spectator

16 hours ago

When my father, a barrister who still insists on calling himself 'working class', talks to his friends about their early days in London, I almost reel at how pleasant it all sounds. Cheap rent in Chelsea. Jobs they got by word of mouth. Long holidays and longer lunches. It sounds less like real life and more like a Richard Curtis fantasy. My own version of post-university London is somewhat different.
I have had a privileged life. I'm one of six children, all privately educated – the result of a Catholic mother, said barrister father and years of school fees paid to institutions that, frankly, struggle to justify their expense. I won't pretend I've had a hard upbringing. And yet, my life as a young professional looks much bleaker than those tales of Sloane Rangers heading to the south of France on holiday or leaving London to their second home in the country for the weekend.
I usually work 60, sometimes 70 hours a week, split between my full-time job and a second role at the weekend as an estate agent (please forgive me). I consider myself a hard worker. And yet, I'm not working to save for a flat or even a holiday – I'm working to cover rent and decide which can of soup feels least depressing that evening. I know readers are probably tired of hearing young people complain, insisting that 'we don't have it like you did'. But perhaps it's time we acknowledged that it's true.
The average home in London now costs 12 times the average wage, compared with 4.6 in the 1970s. Now look at pay: in 1980, the average wage was £6,000, the equivalent of £25,800 today, while median pay in 2025 is £37,400. That's growth of around 45 per cent, compared to a trebling in the cost of a home. The biggest expense, the main thing that eats up all of those earnings, has massively increased in cost. The idea of getting on the property ladder feels less like a potential milestone and more like a mythical quest.
I have a student loan that increases each year (interest is around the 7 per cent mark), an overdraft I've accepted as permanent – and yet I'm expected to hand over half my modest salary just to keep a roof over my head. The irony of those over 65 enjoying free travel across London while I'm charged £240 a month by TfL feels less like a serious policy than a generational betrayal.
Then there's the taxman, who in my new post-university role seems especially cruel. My age group pays in and sees almost nothing in return. My father's finances aren't especially abundant, but the state pension gives him an extra £1,000 a month which he uses to top up his Roederer champagne supplies and expand his esoteric collection of prints. It makes me want to stick pins in my hands.
Even the idea of having a child now feels like a luxury I can't afford. I certainly won't be able to give my imagined children the kind of life I had. Of my five older siblings, four have sworn off children entirely simply because of the cost – much to the dismay of my mother. Of course, not everyone in my generation is struggling. There are still those cushioned by the Bank of Mum and Dad who glide through their twenties with trust funds and flats that just 'sort of happened'. One trust-funded friend recently told me she was 'too busy' to get a job.
So yes, this may all sound like whingeing. But I don't write this in search of sympathy. I write it as a warning. Only those with stonking rich parents, able to sub the cost of a flat, can afford to live in London. The rest of us, who came here looking for high-paying jobs, have discovered that even when we find them, the cost of housing takes most of our wages.
I fear we are witnessing the death of the middle class. What will replace it? A vast group of renters and wage slaves who can't escape – no matter how hard they work. And at the top, those who have inherited their cash, able to live quite happily from the proceeds of investments made by their parents. It doesn't seem a particularly healthy way to run a country.