City
Here's How Many Jobs You'll Need to Afford an Apartment at Minimum Wage
2.3.
That's according to a new report from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, which crunched the numbers, state by state and city by city, to figure out how many full-time jobs s a person would have to work at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment ("afford" being defined as "pay no more than 30 percent of monthly income on rent.")[pullquote]A worker in Seattle would need to make $21.12 an hour---well over double the minimum wage---to afford an apartment working just one full-time job at 40 hours a week.[/pullquote]
That's at the relatively generous state minimum of $9.04, by the way, not at the federal minimum of $7.25.
Put another way, a minimum wage worker would need to work more than 80 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, to afford a "fair market rent" two-bedroom apartment that costs $1,098 a month.
Put yet another way, a worker in Seattle would need to make $21.12 an hour---well over double the minimum wage---to afford an apartment working just one full-time job at 40 hours a week. Searching the Seattle area on Zillow, I found exactly 18 two-bedrooms that met those criteria---most of them on the far northern or southern reaches of town. I found more one-bedrooms, but those were only marginally less expensive; according to the NLIHC's study a minimum wage earner in Washington State would still have to work 66 hours a week to afford a fair-market one-bedroom, a number that is certainly higher in Seattle.
And that's in a city in Washington State, where we have the highest minimum wage in the nation. Compare that to Hawaii, where you need to make $31.68 an hour to afford that same apartment---or, alternately, work 175 hours a week, 52 weeks a year (or, put yet another way, have 4.4 full-time wage earners living in the apartment).
Editorializing here: Reports like this make me wonder what ever happened to the living-wage movement. Am I just stuck in the '90s? Or is paying people a wage they can actually afford to live on just a political persona non grata?
[Link to study via Ezra Klein.]
That's according to a new report from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, which crunched the numbers, state by state and city by city, to figure out how many full-time jobs s a person would have to work at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment ("afford" being defined as "pay no more than 30 percent of monthly income on rent.")[pullquote]A worker in Seattle would need to make $21.12 an hour---well over double the minimum wage---to afford an apartment working just one full-time job at 40 hours a week.[/pullquote]
That's at the relatively generous state minimum of $9.04, by the way, not at the federal minimum of $7.25.
Put another way, a minimum wage worker would need to work more than 80 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, to afford a "fair market rent" two-bedroom apartment that costs $1,098 a month.
Put yet another way, a worker in Seattle would need to make $21.12 an hour---well over double the minimum wage---to afford an apartment working just one full-time job at 40 hours a week. Searching the Seattle area on Zillow, I found exactly 18 two-bedrooms that met those criteria---most of them on the far northern or southern reaches of town. I found more one-bedrooms, but those were only marginally less expensive; according to the NLIHC's study a minimum wage earner in Washington State would still have to work 66 hours a week to afford a fair-market one-bedroom, a number that is certainly higher in Seattle.
And that's in a city in Washington State, where we have the highest minimum wage in the nation. Compare that to Hawaii, where you need to make $31.68 an hour to afford that same apartment---or, alternately, work 175 hours a week, 52 weeks a year (or, put yet another way, have 4.4 full-time wage earners living in the apartment).
Editorializing here: Reports like this make me wonder what ever happened to the living-wage movement. Am I just stuck in the '90s? Or is paying people a wage they can actually afford to live on just a political persona non grata?
[Link to study via Ezra Klein.]
