How is this going to work for people who don’t have jobs or the ones they have don’t pay a whole lot?

According to the most-recent information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in January 2021 fell by 0.4%, to 6.3%. The bureau reported, “notable job gains in professional and business services and in both public and private education were offset by losses in leisure and hospitality, in retail trade, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.”

The categories that grew are undoubtedly those with higher-wage earners while those who have lost their jobs—the wait staff, department store workers—but healthcare?

Those who have a job are going to be paying more for a vehicle: Kelley Blue Book has calculated that the average transaction price for a light vehicle in January was $40,857. That’s right: nearly $41,000. In December 2020 it was actually above that: $41,152.

Admittedly, when you’re talking averages, number extremes can skew the results.

In the case of the January figures, high-performance cars came in at $104,929 and high-end luxury cars at $102,057.

On the other end, there is the subcompact car at $18,783.

And that’s the only vehicle that had an average transaction car under $20,000.

As more and more OEMs stop producing cars in any variety in order to concentrate on crossovers (subcompact SUV/crossover: $26,368), they are clearly leaving some potential customers behind.–gsv