Government
CityLab Daily: The Minimum Wage Can’t Pay for a Two-Bedroom Apartment
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Placed wager: If you were working a minimum-wage job in the United States and needed to rent a two-bedroom apartment, where would you go? As it turns out, that place is nowhere to be found: There’s not a single state, metro area, or county where 40 hours of work at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour pulls in enough money to cover rent without exceeding 30 percent of income. In only 28 counties is it possible to rent a one-bedroom affordably. As the map below shows, paying the fair market rent for a two-bedroom could require working up to three full-time jobs in some places.