Actually, I'd caution you there. There's roughly 25k Apple employees in the Bay area and Apple is a top payer in terms of salary. I've been shopping for homes in the Bay since I arrived and South Bay is easily 1M+ for a very tiny home. Oakland is about 600k+ and usually both markets require cash on top to get a home. That puts average mortgages (and rent) in the 3-5k range. If the average salary is limited by the number of companies that can pay more than 3-5k per paycheck (you want rent or mortgage to be 1/3 of your paycheck for risk purposes) then yes, Apple employees, depending on when they get their place to live, could already be over leveraged and at risk.