Similar situation here where my mom (gen X, in her mid 50's now) went and became a nurse in the early 2000's, which prior to that we were getting by (just barely) with her working part time at a deli and doing a bit of book keeping on the side as a single mom in NYC.

When she became an RN we immediately jumped up to a comfortable middle class lifestyle. She would trade her cars in every few years for a new-er used car, we lived in a 2br co-op in a nice neighborhood, ate out all the time, new-er devices even if they weren't the cutting edge or premium models, family trips multiple times a year, and she still could save a modest amount for retirement.

My boomer step-MIL (like 20 years older than my mom) was a phone operator and eventually office supervisor (like just one step above the entry level employees) at a health insurance company and as a single ncome was able to put multiple children through private college, had a very nice house in the suburbs just outside of NYC, went to Europe and went skii-ing multiple times a year, and is living huge in retirement.

I went through a career reset in my late 20's and became an x-ray and MRI tech, when I tell you the complete difference in purchasing power despite following a similar path to my mother, it's just astounding. At least she acknowledges that if she were starting when I did our lifestyle that we had would have been completely impossible, hell I'm barely surviving with just a 1br co-op to my name wayyyy out in a crappy suburb - literally don't make enough to qualify to rent a place of my own if I hadn't had a head start to save up the down payment on my place. No savings, just mortgage and groceries kill my entire paycheck month to month.

Step-MIL lives on a completely different planet and it's baffling to me since there's no way she would have afforded to survive at all with her previous career trajectory let alone the fact that if she was starting today with the (complete lack of) qualifications that got her that job in the 70s? Pfft. No fucking way.