Everything depends on energy.
New houses massively depend on energy because you're not just supporting the shipment of wood to a build site, but supporting an entire industry of suppliers buying products from one end of the earth to the other, and ALL of the costs have risen. I don't know why the "CPI" still thinks we're 25% more expensive because a 2x4 before covid was $2 - and is now $3.50
Everything in the building industry is like this.
Now compound that with the price of groceries and everything else. It's literally impossible to afford rent let alone a mortgage.
You can't have a family if you live at mom's house.
On top of that, everything in this modern world is telling you that climate change, etc.. all that stuff has a massive affect on people wanting to have kids. There has been a large concerted effort to tell people to go gay or reject masculinity, etc.. tons of efforts to destabilize people emotionally enough to have kids. At this rate no one is ready to have them until they're outside of bearing age.
