Sure. What was the rate of homebuilding to job growth in NYC and other major metro areas in the US?

I am not trying to be snarky, I actually agree with you. I just simply don't have that data on hand right now. But I am aligned with you in suspecting that the rate of home building to job growth would be a better indicator of the real housing market change (as opposed to the ratio of new residential units/1k residents or, to a lesser degree, raw numbers of new residential units).

It is even more accurate to consider job growth in terms of income growth. Job growth could very well go negative but if it means replacement of a working population with one of higher income, that also contributes to upward pressure on prices from this high income job growth.

Even worse for the supply side crunch is that this high income population is not like the previous population in the sense that they aren't as sensitive to this given price level. So demand based responses to price increases aren't seen until the prices are truly bewildering due to the amount of disposable income available for some of these workers that could be spent on housing.