In 57 of 100 of the largest cities in America, the gross salary needed to comfortably (using 30% of salary) afford a studio apartment is higher than the national median wage.
And in many cities the gap to the local median wage is huge too. $140k to afford a studio in NYC!
I wonder how other anglosphere cities would stack up. Toronto and Vancouver housing markets I know are absolutely wack, whereas Montreal is significantly more YIMBY than them, resulting in much more affordable housing. I don’t know so well about, say, Australia, but I do generally year they have a nasty housing crisis as well.