Workers Go Bust on Cost of Living Amid Miami Boom

Proving how difficult an ideally balanced economy can be, Miami is celebrating a low unemployment rate while struggling with crushing inflation and housing costs.

It is a microcosm of the economic difficulties facing Americans and the needle threading before the Federal Reserve under President Joe Biden, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

"The usual trade-off between unemployment and inflation is just not happening in this tightening cycle," the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting's Sean Snaith told the Journal, calling Miami the U.S. economic poster child.

The Fed should not cut interest rates this year, as Miami is showing, according to Snaith.

Miami boasts a 2.7% unemployment rate among the lowest for a metro in the U.S., but the job boom is proving to bust workers on costs of living, as housing prices have doubled in just six years and wages are not keeping up with the Joneses, according to the report.

Also, the inflation rate of 4.5% in April is exceeding wage growth and has to be weighed in relation to the 9% nearly double that from the year prior.

Miami has been a growing hub for white-collar jobs, as those fleeing Wall Street for South Florida have expanded the market for blue-collar service workers in the rapidly growing city, according to the report.

Most of the job growth is for workers to serve the upper-class workers in jobs making less than $19 an hour, including cooks, waitstaff, housekeepers, warehouse, and delivery staff.

That is a tough salary for workers who are attempting to own homes in a region where the median home is valued around $560,000 — up from $280,000 in January 2018 — according to Redfin.

Miami has the largest share of renters spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

• James Carville: 'Democrat Messaging Is Full of S***!'
• Sen. Rick Scott Calls for Govt Probe Into EV Payoffs