This is actually part of what I'm talking about. The sweet high-paying tech jobs went to a group of people that can comfortably afford to live without marrying

This is actually part of what I'm talking about. The sweet high-paying tech jobs went to a group of people that can comfortably afford to live without marrying off. They date around because they can. I know, because I got that sweet job in 2008 just at the start of the tech wave and I dated around quite a bit and the pressure to get married for financial reasons wasn't there and the social pressure to get married for its own sake wasn't either. This isn't how it looked like in the 1950s or earlier. Most people didn't date 100 different women or wait until they were 35 to start a home with someone. It's partially financial and partially societal. At the other end of the spectrum the increasing gap between rich and poor pushed a lot of men completely out of the dating pool because they can no longer afford basic housing for themselves, so even if they would be willing to commit they don't have options.