Yea people need to get back to work. Every business is short on workers. My babysitter has an agency and they can’t find sitters even at $18/hr. Restaurants here have maybe three people working (furiously). Friend works for a hotel and they had to pay $25/hr for a dish washer at the restaurant. That’s $50k a year plus benefits.
That leaves your dishwasher a reasonable budget of about 16k a year for affordable rent.
Around here the average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment is slightly over $1,600 per month. That is $19,200 for the year. Getting roommates and a 2-3 bedroom place does not really improve the picture much.
Everything will be OK, as long as car never breaks down and the dishwasher never gets sick. Better not get stuck with a traffic ticket or a late payment fee on something.
Run that scenario again for $12 per hour and it is not worth walking out the door for that job.