This Research InBrief by NERI economist, Ciarán Nugent examines trends in earnings, employment and minimum essential living standards in the context of a cost-of-living crisis for workers in Ireland in their late twenties and early thirties over the past decade or so. Despite increasing shares in third level educational attainment, now the highest in the EU, the cost of housing is increasingly limiting the ability of young Irish workers to live independently through hard work and undermining living standards for large shares of those that do.