Walt Disney World unions reach agreement with the company

It's been fascinating to watch the resurgence in labor organization over the past few years. You can certainly pin some of this particular outcome on market forces--Universal is paying at least $17 (I think), and so Disney was up against at least that. But this looks like a pretty major win for the unions.

Lots of other things like this are going on. My son is a grad student at UCLA, and the UC grad student union won significant improvements for their members last year--but only after a strike that lasted most of the Fall quarter, through the end of final exams. U. Michigan GSIs are likely to strike on Monday--in the past, the Engineering students tended to ignore a strike (if they were members) and crossed picket lines (if they were not) but I am not so sure that's going to happen this time given what happened in UC.

Pendulum that swings one way and then back the other. Disney, Universal, etc. will be fine. Will be interesting to see impact on other businesses do competing with higher priced labor.

It's a win for labor, but I wonder what it's going to take to get rent back to an even remotely reasonable place. You're better off with a mortgage from a monthly cashflow perspective, but that's assuming you're creditworthy and have the money to put down. Housing costs are a dumpster fire here, and they weren't nearly as bad ten years ago when I got here.

Having been in Central Florida now for 15 years, I would have bought years ago if I had known what was coming. I hate spending what I do on rent, but even with good credit and decent income I can't imagine coming up with a down payment right now.

What's wild is that I'm making more now than I have at any point in my working life but would likely not qualify to rent houses that I could have likely figured out a way to buy while making significantly less money in the 2010s.

If I didn't love my job as much as I do I can't imagine I would still be here.

That's messed up. I deeply sympathize. I don't know how we make this better.

It looks like Orlando's price-to-rent ratio is somewhere in the 19-21 range.
https://www.mashvisor.com/l...ate-market

Based on that, renting is probably better than buying on average, but exceptions certainly exist. So rent is bad, but buying in the current market environment might be even worse.
https://smartasset.com/data...ities-2022

It will be interesting to see if the ratio settles back lower as the nomadic work-from-home thing retracts even a little bit. It's not going away, but there is definitely a swing towards more in-person work, and I suspect that will continue in at least some sectors.

Good data, though the median rental price is not really representative of the area close to Disney. You would need a car and a reasonable gas budget to hit that target. My hope is that I see an insane amount of new apartments being built in the western OC area. Casually searching, it looks like you can expect $1,700 minimum in the new construction, and you know it'll be higher the second year. Two adults at $18 is gross $5760. The magic 28% for housing of that is $1613, which isn't a lot of margin for error.

And that is if you have two incomes. This becomes even more difficult if you are single and would like to live within a 45 minute drive of Disney.