The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released findings today showing that minimum wage workers can’t afford rent anywhere in the country. Worse, even if we had a $15-an-hour minimum wage, minimum wage workers still couldn’t afford to rent a place.
The report finds that in order to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent, a full-time worker in America today must earn $20.30 per hour—a figure that is almost $5 more than the average hourly wage of renters in the U.S. A full-time worker needs to earn $16.35 per hour to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment.
A worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would need to work 2.8 full time jobs, or approximately 112 hours per week for all 52 weeks of the year, in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment at HUD’s Fair Market Rent (FMR). If this worker slept for eight hours per night, he or she would have no remaining time during the week for anything other than working and sleeping.
[Brutal]
This is depressing but unsurprising news. The report, called Out of Reach, points out once again that income inequality is a major culprit along with wage stagnation—especially for those making the least in our society.