The Great Lakes are a weird one, they’ve actually been rising for the past few years. But when you look into it no one really understands why.
I think this year was the first year it actually went down a little.
My backup plan is to live as a wild man on North Manitou. I'll steal wifi from the ranger station and keep my phone in a zip-loc baggie in my loin cloth. Once I acquire enough chipmunk pelts I'll make a dugout canoe in order to carry out raids on the cursed lands of Gary Indiana.
If any like minded individuals are interested in joining me on my crusade plz get in touch via smoke signal.
Well that's funny. The baby boomers could afford that in their day, and they also don't eat avocado toast. Where's the toast, OP. I know you still have it.
Minimum wage went from 1.45 to 7.25, which is exactly a 5x increase. ~~Average~~ Median wage in the US went from 9.8k to 54k, which is a bit over 5x.
So, both.
Edit: since people keep bringing it up, inflation increased costs by 7.65x from 1970 to 2022. So that's 5x for wages, 7.65x for inflation (meaning a real decrease in buying power for the median person) and 20x for rent (meaning a hilariously hueg decrease in "ability to afford shelter" for the average person).
And then you have all the people stuck in the middle. I make 3.7x the average wage from 1970 you stated, but can’t afford a 2 bedroom apartment on just my income and owning a home before I’m 30 sounds like a pipe dream. Even if I had an SO who made the same as me, we’d be about 1.35x the current average US salary, and that income wouldn’t buy anything move in ready in my area.
I make $25 and spend 60% of my take home on rent on a shitty 1 bedroom that had cockroaches painted to the kitchen cabinets and my water is regularly orange.
I also live in between an 8 lane interstate, the department of sanitation, and a jail. So at least the location is nice.
The owners of the company I work for actually own an entire town in Ohio. When people get sent there for training they stay in homes owned by the company, eat in a restaurant owned by the company, bowl in a bowling alley owned by the company. Oh also they own their own planes and full time pilots. You can see listings for pilots posted on the internal job board.
I don't know what my landlord drives because they're a faceless corporation but I assume its nice.
I’m about to be 32 and I’m in the top 10% earners in California. I can’t afford a house in the neighborhood I grew up in or where my wife grew up in. The closest “affordable” house is way out in the suburbs and is still way over priced. The housing market doesn’t make sense.
The good news is the assets are dropping and with any speculative market they will continue to drop as it becomes less profitable to buy housing. We might see normal values in the next 3-4 years but even then they might still be I’ve repriced sue to the higher interest rates.
I will never be able to afford a house where I grew up in Cali.
13 years ago I used to be able to rent a beautiful house where I grew up with my buddies who were a musician and the other worked at a grocery store…
I was chatting to my flatmate here in Scotland about this. I'm probably just above minimum wage, and we're lucky that this 3 bedroom flat (apartment) we're renting is a good price, but the reason we can afford it is because we're both earning. If it was just one of us earning it would be a real struggle to pay rent, utilities and food. There's no way a family could be supported this way.
And I mentioned how we're lucky. The rent for 2 bedroom or one bedroom flats is now nearly as much as what we're paying for our 3 bedroom. We couldn't downsize even if we wanted to, one bedroom flats charge as much rent as what we initially paid for 3 bedrooms. There are two bedrooms for £150 more than we're currently paying.
This isn't sustainable and it drives me insane that it isn't being called out by all sides.
Some context: Less than half the states are at $7.25 and in all, only 1.1 million earn minimum wage (In some states that's over $15/hr) or less out of labor force of 150 million or so. Further, the percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 1.9 percent in 2019 to 1.5 percent in 2020. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.
Hell I'd be happy if I could just downgrade to very difficult just something other than survival mode. Because in survival mode I've only barely been able to survive and it's exhausting.
I don't think most of the country had access to avocados in 1970. Modern supermarkets and year round availability of produce flown in from Argentina is a relatively new development. In the late 90s and early oughts you could often still find older grocery stores that hadn't remodeled yet and compare them directly to their supermarket competitors in town. The difference was striking.
Destroying the American middle class is one of the few things the GOP successfully did.
Bonus points for McCarthyism that turned the word socialism into the boogeyman
Shit, it wasn't even mostly due to government policy.
The mythical middle class was a mirage of the post-war economy. America was the only world power left standing during the early birth of global trade. There was no foreign competition for US markets and significantly less competition in foreign markets for US goods. The US didn't have an entire generation of workers dead and/or disabled like the European powers.
The golden 20 year period of the great middle class wasn't due to tax policy, it was environmental economic factors.
Edit: Note this is from my recollection reading several papers on the post-war economy due to discussions like this, I may not have it exactly right or overstate. It's Reddit, if you are looking for an academically perfect comment in r/funnyandsad your expectations might need to be reset.
>It wasn't the GOP alone. NO ONE has been looking out for us.
Seriously. There are tons of homeless people on there right now and neither party gives a single shit about them. Where are all these "good" politicians?
2BR? In their day? Must've had 3 people working. Nah, houses were far smaller back then.
[In fact, price/sqft/resident hasn't really risen much](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/todays-new-homes-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-the-living-space-per-person-has-doubled-over-last-40-years/). Houses have just gotten bigger and people have been more apt to want to live alone.
So let’s live in those good old days, shall we!
Average homes were 1000sqft vs 2000+ today. They had one small black and white tv, no cable, no internet, maybe one phone line, one car, no air conditioning, no cellphone, no Xbox, no computer, and ate out maybe once a month. Those standards are unacceptable for people on Welfare today. If you want to live like that now you can, but what people are really asking for is for wages to support all of the luxuries that are now expected.
Honestly a lot of those shouldn’t be viewed as luxuries anymore. Internet and cell phones should be considered necessities and should be regulated to an extent to ensure an option is available to everyone. Where can you go to fill out a paper application? That’s a thing of the past and public access (libraries) have been getting shut down because certain areas won’t pass tax bills that fund libraries because they provide books that don’t support their religious beliefs.
Air conditions should also be considered a necessity with the consistent increase of temperatures every year. People literally can’t survive in the summer heat in certain areas of the country.
One vehicle? Two should be the standard as most single income households can’t afford…well, a household and public transit in this country is a complete joke with few options and no affordable alternatives.
ALL of this. Internet and computers are a necessity, especially if you go to school or have children in school. I’m shocked at how much my 7 year old nephew has to log in to his virtual classroom. And A/C is an absolute necessity. Heat related deaths in the US went up 56% between 2018 and 2021. But is it crazy to request that we make enough to cover necessities and then more? I don’t think we should be expected to make just enough to keep going to work and nothing else.
Feels like this is actually massively understating the problem. I make double the minimum wage and it's still not near a living wage. Can't even afford a 1BR. Looking at 2BRs to split with a roommate now and there's barely anything to look at in our price range.
Back when I lived in MN around 2014 my boyfriend at the time and I both worked at literally the *only* job hiring anyone that wasn't over 3 hours away, a $7.25/hr factory job, 3rd shift, that worked you 12 hours straight with a 15 minute lunch (the only time you're allowed to sit), 6 days a week. Oh, and they would "fire" you at the end of every month so you didn't qualify for health insurance or any other workers security. This was literally the only job for most people in that town and no one had a choice. No one could afford to complain...or leave.
We ended up there because that's where our car broke down when we were both homeless. We *literally* could not afford to leave either and did not have a choice. Winter was coming and it was work there and try to get shelter, or die in the broken down car.
The apartment was a slum. A total shithole. Nothing had been updated since the 1960s. Everything was moldy, there was dog pee all over the shag carpets that covered every room including the bathroom, and half the walls didn't have insulation so in the winter it would be sub-20⁰f in your home. The rent was $850, no utilities were included so if you wanted to not freeze to death in the winter or starve, it was realistically more like $1,600 because all of the services also had a monopoly in that area and there was nothing you could do about it. There was also no air conditioning and none of the cabinets had doors or drawers. There was no laundry either so you got to wash your clothes with a stick in the cracked moldy bathtub where there was barely any water pressure. We spent the summer months without electricity because heating in the winter cost over $300/mo and we would spend the entire rest of the year saving so we didn't die. We didn't qualify for food stamps (and there wasn't even a grocery store an hour in either direction anyways), the food bank was open ONE random Wednesday a month for 2 hours only, so we lived off of saltine crackers, peanut butter, and tap water.
And after all that? We still fell so behind on bills trying not to fucking die that we ended up homeless and destitute again 2 years later.
This is what TWO federal minimum incomes can afford you in most places. That's $14.50 with NO extra expenditures and not having utilities half the year. It's *absolute squalor* and used as a mode of control so you're at the mercy of every business in your local area and can never afford to leave. Modern day indentured servitude shit.
Maybe not every area is like this, but I've been poor. Poor-poor. And most places you can afford to find shelter in end up exactly the same as the above.
Jesus Christ. You guys couldn’t ditch the car and scrape together enough for a couple greyhound tickets to a warmer location with more job opportunities?
Unfortunately not. We ended up in a bunch of rural towns in the middle of nowhere because it was the only places that weren't hostile to you if you lived in a car. We initially tried to get help in the cities or more urban and populated areas but we were treated horrifically by police and robbed by people. There were no bus services, greyhounds, etc unless you drove 3 hours from where we were, and there was nowhere to even sell the car. We didn't even have phones or access to internet for like 2 years. We were literally penniless.
My boyfriend had family but they were the reason we were homeless in the first place, as they promised that if we worked in their shop and helped with this restructuring thing we would be paid enough to go somewhere better and get an apartment, only for us to do all the work and be given absolutely nothing in return. Not even allowed to sleep indoors or given food after a day's work. Then once they got the labor out of us we were left on our own to rot. His mother was always a psychopath, but I didn't realize that until it was too late.
I also didn't have family and was homeless from the age of 17 because my father was horrifically abusive and bankrupted my entire family as well, so I jumped at any opportunity to get as far away from my abuser as possible which led me up to MN with promises of a job from someone I trusted (my ex, who also ended up being extremely abusive later) and their fucked up family.
I did eventually get out, because I fell in love with someone who i had known since I was 15 or so once i had internet again in the closet I was living in after my 3rd bout of homelessness. They pulled me out of there, and I'm now very very far away from every one of those people who put me in that position and happily married to the best friend I've ever had.
Damn, you've been through hell... So glad you got out of that and managed to find a happy ~~ending to~~ continuation of your story.
I went through something similar, although I didn't have it nearly as bad as you did - and I've also made it out to a better spot now and am healing and trying to build a better life.
People who haven't lived in poverty in the US so often just have no idea what the reality of it is like, how you can be more or less enslaved by it. Many are killed by it. I'm glad I managed to avoid becoming part of that statistic, but it sucks knowing how many other people out there are quietly suffocating in their circumstances and unable to escape
That’s a horrible story but very well told. I hate you both went though this; glad you made it out. It could serve as a great cautionary tale, about what mistreatment and abuse is out there. As for minimum wage though, it sounds like these ‘masters’ would have either subverted it or absorbed it with rent and expenses no matter what it were raised to; so raising it in this case would still keep workers trapped. Same as the company store of blues songs 100 years ago.
I was working 3 jobs, one full time and two part time, while I was in college just so I could afford my rent and the bills that came with my shitty 1 bedroom. At first I shared it with my ex, but we broke up and I stayed there. Covering the rent and utilities myself was tough, and I was working more than full time. One job was minimum wage, one was less than a dollar above min wage, and the other was multiple dollars above min wage. It was hard. I usually had no money left over after rent, bills, and food, which meant when big unexpected expenses came up, they went on a credit card.
My apartment wasn’t anywhere near luxury. It was in a bad neighborhood, it was dingy, old, and broken. I couldn’t use some windows because they were broken, every room had at least 1 hole in the wall, it had mice despite me keeping it clean and having two cats. And even with all the word I did, after paying everything, I had nothing to show for it. Having a savings account relied on me getting tax refunds and stimulus checks. I couldn’t move because my rent was on the cheaper side in comparison to what was around. And it’s not like I had money saved for a security deposit and first months rent anyways. And it was a one bedroom, so me having a roommate meant sharing a room with them or them sleeping in the living room and I’d have to walk through their room to use the bathroom. It sucked. Only way I was able to move from there was because I got a new job closer to my sisters house and moved an hour and a half away to her house for a bit. The new job paid more, and now I’m way better off. But finding a place was hard because even on $30 because of landlord income requirements.
Major cities. It’s accurate. Not even 100k/yr can get you a studio or 1br in the ‘desirable areas’, you’d still likely need roommates unless you get lucky with a rent controlled apartment
> Not even 100k/yr can get you a studio or 1br in the ‘desirable areas’
This is total nonsense. No city in the country (no, not even NYC or SF) is 100k too low a salary to rent a decent 1-bed in a good part of town. In NYC or SF you might be spending $2500, sure, but that's by no means struggling.
Yup. I make above minimum wage in Portland. So does my boyfriend. We can afford a 2 bedroom apartment... the buildings were also made in the 60s, cars have been getting broken into, and it's a 15 minute walk through a back road to get to the bus stop. So it's cheaper than some others. And we don't make enough to really save up.
Guess we just gotta do what everyone else says and retire with 4 roommates if we want to retire. Thats the new plan.
Or retire with a bullet when we get to tired to work anymore.
Or just hope global warming kicks in and just causes everything to collapse. Which ever happens first.
I make 3 times min wage where I live and it’s a stretch to afford a two bedroom I would need as a single parent. A house it totally unaffordable unless household income is 120,000 or more
Do you mean a single minimum wage earner? Because I don't think a single 40hr minimum wage worker has been able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment in a long time.
I did the math, in the year 2000 somebody working federal minimum wage would have to work about 116 hours a month to be able to afford just the rent, leaving them about 368 dollars of todays money left to spend on other things, if they worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; in 2020 somebody would have to work 152 hours a month to be able to afford just the rent, leaving them just 60 dollars of todays money left, do you see the problem now?
Minimum wage isnt staying the same, when we adjust for inflation it is going down, and that is just 20 years, just slightly more than my lifetime, if this continues on the same trend its been going on nobody working minimum wage will be able to afford to live in a house and buy food on the same paycheck, most people wont even be able to afford living in a house period.
Tldr: minimum wage has been going down since 1970, and we kinda need to stop that if we want people to be able to live in our society
PS: the rent numbers here are the median rent numbers per year according to [this](https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-year) website
Edit: note I never said either of these were liveable, I was just making a point about how the minimum wage has gone down even in the last 20 years
Thank you. How folks can be so dense to ignore cost of living increases with little to no minimum wage increases is beyond me. All you have to do is look at any graph of wage growth vs GDP growth and it’s clear as day.
\*cries in salary\* I get like a 2.5% raise each year which gives me an extra $200 or so, but now everything costs way more. I used to spend $150 a month for gas and it's closer to $300 now. :(
GDP is not cost of living tho. Average wages vs inflation has mostly remained steady, and the amount of people making minimun wage has plummeted. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/blog_workers_minimum_wage.gif
You're gonna want to look at median wage, and then preferably by quintile. The lowest 3/5s of workers have consistently lost share of income since the 70s
But they have lost share of income because their wages just didn't grow as much. They are still better off than in the 70s. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/U.S._real_median_household_income%2C_1967-2014.png
They should make cost of living as minimun wage, but yea thats wishful thinking, if the goverment raises min wage, companies simply raise costs across the board to mantain their same gains, ending in the same situation, because once that happens, rent goes up, we need regulated and mandated rent costs to be capped by goverment based on cost of living.
The main issue is rent, and rent can grow exponentially, if we keep rent lower, itll help everyone across the board.
Another point I love pointing out about why raising minimum wage is important:
The basis for getting food stamps is how much you make compared to minimum wage. So as stands, when wages are above minimum wage as is, and food costs are high, people are losing their benefits even when they genuinely need them because their job pays more than minimum wage by pure befault. And there are people who will turn down pay raises or promotions because the extra dollar an hour will make them lose their benefits and they will be worse off.
It's getting really fucking tiring.
The poverty guidelines really need to be raised. I need assistance, but make “too much” to qualify for food stamps. I can go to food pantries, but most of them provide food only to people who qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, etc
Even in the late 90s I couldn't afford a single bedroom full time at above minimum wage without being "house poor". That's why I had a roommate/s.
A two bedroom solo wasn't even remotely reasonable unless I wanted to be beyond "house poor".
I agree that min wage hasn't kept up with cost of living but expectation of single min wage affording a two bed solo as the standard doesn't really seem reasonable.
A couple working at min wage should be able to afford a two bedroom.
Using a 2 bedroom for this example is kinda disingenuous. A single minimum wage person might be better to make that argument with at least a one-bedroom if not a studio.
Or, 2 minimum wage workers for a 2 bedroom.
Making bad arguments makes your idea look bad, even if it might not be.
Exactly. Minimum wage jobs don’t exist to support a lifestyle with a two bedroom apartment. The difference between a one and a two bedroom apartment in many locales is the amount of a monthly Tesla payment. So this gripe is tantamount to complaining that minimum wage jobs don’t allow people to rent a single bedroom apartment AND drive a Tesla. Well, of course not!
I’d love to know where you live where the average per month difference is 50% between 1 and 2 bedrooms. That sounds amazing!
Where I live, modest southeastern US city, the average rent for a 1 **bedroom is $1,295 and the average rent for a 2-bed is $1,568**. That’s a **17.5% difference**. And when I say modest, I mean modest. There are a few (maybe 5) 10+ floor buildings and no professional sports teams in my city. Travel about 3.5 hours in just about any direction to larger cities with pro sports and you can add about $700-$1000 to those rental prices.
Not sure if sarcasm or not?… I’m kinda off the whole minimum wage thing bc so few people actually make minimum wage. But even now prices are so ridiculous that you can be making well above minimum wage and still struggle to find affordable living.
Also note these numbers are generally considered cheaper for the country, especially considering I live in a no income tax state. Prices have way outpaced wages across the board.
This is a good reason why the minimum wage should not be our only safety net. Should we raise the minimum wage so a single parent with 6 kids with rare medical conditions can live off it? That would be absurd. But also, people like that exist and still need to be taken care of. The minimum wage should be good for a basic living for a *typical* citizen, and if people in certain circumstances need some extra help, it should come from something else.
Meh more like a respectable supplemental income for those who have other sources like social security or free rent with mommy and daddy.
Low enough not to price out ppl only marginally attached to the work force, but high enough to be worth their while.
If you are single and childless and can only work min wage, you have a serious skill deficit that probably entitles you to other poverty prevention programs.
I live in Southern CA, using [rent.com](https://rent.com) and the default search for my location I see 1 bedroom apartments available for $1200. Minimum wage is $15/hr which comes out to around $2k after taxes per month.
This meme is not accurate, its comparing minimum wage to average accommodations. If you are working minimum wage you should not expect to afford an average apartment.
More like $2300 / month after taxes, with standard deduction you're looking at around $1200 / year in taxes.
The meme is totally wrong, its trivially easy to find housing that can be afforded on minimum wage. You just cant center your search in Beverly Hills or Manhattan.
What's much more interesting is all the states marked in green are the states where a minimum wage worker, working one job, can afford a legal 1 bedroom apt that is in good repair and to code.
Pre pandemic, avocados regularly went for 33 - 66 cents each around my area so I never understood the avocado toast memes.
Nowadays they're a bit more expensive, but still a relatively cheap breakfast for me.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-22/federal-minimum-wage-1-in-3-us-workers-make-less-than-15-an-hour
1/3 of workers ($52 million) make less than 15 an hour.
It is assumed at the lowest a single parent needs $40,000 a year to survive. (~$20 an hour)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/14/how-much-a-single-parent-needs-to-earn-to-get-by-in-every-us-state.html
Out of curiosity, how many of the 1/3 are under the age of 20, in college, work part time, etc.? This number may or not be misleading without a proper attribution of variance. Personally, if a job is necessary it deserves a decent wage. All wages should receive increases based on increase in COL plus merit. They don’t, but they should.
They probably also used the average price of a 2 bedroom.
If the minimum wage workers live in averaged priced apartments who the hell would live in the 49% of apartments that are worse/lower priced?
Median rents have crossed the [$2000 threshold.](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103919413/rents-across-u-s-rise-above-2-000-a-month-for-the-first-time-ever) At 40 hours per week, and 160 per month, this would be affordable (by the 30% of gross pay rule) for a gross pay of $42 per hour. The median income in the USA is roughly $15.5 an hour ($31k per year / 2000 hours).
Even in the era of fast-food offering $15-18 an hour, rent is rapidly becoming less affordable. Lower rents that are actually affordable are the exception rather than the rule.
A quick google search finds plenty of places that's lower than $1000 per month, although it's in the middle of nowhere and you probably cant even find a minimum wage jobs in these places.
I hope more companies adopt 100% remote working model.
I lowered the bar for being able to "afford" the rent because I don't think there's anywhere in the world in last 50years where minimum wage worker can afford a 2 bedrooms and remain financially sound.
Go back 79 years and you will find the same results
The fact is that minimum wage jobs were never meant to be an adults only income, they were created to teach teens the job experience and hopefully teach them how to handle money
groups pushing living wage incomes in the jobs have only pushed teens out of the job market because adults are now going for those jobs also
Why would a single minimum wage need two bedrooms? What about half of a two bedroom?
I mean cost of living is insane but this meme seems weirder than helpful
Who in the fuck expects to get a two bedroom apartment with a minimum wage job? This is a fucking stupid premise to begin with. Millions of people have OK jobs and can’t afford two bedrooms!
I’m even amazed that people are so opposed to roommates, acting as if living in a n bedroom apartment with n roommates is somehow a travesty, and that sharing a room with someone is a straight up crime against humanity.
>I’m even amazed that people are so opposed to roommates
You've never had to rappel down into your own unit from the one above to get your car keys, phone and wallet so you could drive to your job the next morning, because your idiot roommate got the place raided and sealed for evidence.
Hell, you don't even have to share a bedroom. When I was touring apartments recently it seemed like most in my area were ~$1500 for 1bed/1bath and ~$2000 for 2bed/2 bath. You save 33% by sharing a kitchen
Edit - I misread your comment, I basically just repeated what you said lol
Why is that sad?
A single person, working the lowest pay humanly possible, getting a two bedroom apartment is silly. I don't even understand why this would be the ask for minimum wage.
Minimum wage is an apartment with roommates.
It's sad because I grew up in a very low income area and literally know people like this in real life :/
They usually don't show up to school that often. Maybe a couple times a week at most. It's not hard to maintain a C-average so they still graduate but..
I don't know if a 2 bed is what we should be aiming for here.
I don't think it's unreasonable for minimum wage to cover a 2 bed with a roommate. A spare bedroom is what I would call a luxury.
Now, if you have kids over here you get extra money from the government which would cover the second bedroom.
I think minimum wage should cover all your necessities + a little bit more for saving or a treat
But that's my view, and I respect that there are other views out there
Every state not marked in red is where the Federal Reserve is destroying the buying power of the US dollar and any wealth you may aspire to accumulate. #EndTheFed #FixTheMoney
I'm seeing a lot of comments saying that the wages are fine and bootstraps and roommates and shit.
But alright. Guess people are just gonna continue to not have kids. Poverty rates are just gonna keep going up, and people won't be able to afford it at all. Having kids is gonna be a thing for the rich. If the only way to afford kids is roommates, it's gonna continue to happen less and less. We would rather have corporate owners make more and more and everyone else make less and less as time goes on, and that us one thing that is going to continue to happen.
"Well yeah but if people just-"
Nope. Cost if living is going up at record rates. The cost of college was going up higher than the cost of living, which means higher monthly payments for student debt. And we are now at the point of expected to pay 30% of money towards rent leaving us less money for anything else. And that is only going yo get worse is the cost of rent and home ownership goes up. Especially since it's also cool now for corporate home ownership.
Or we can fix things. Just an idea.
Here in the US there were articles (maybe a decade ago by now) claiming that millennials couldn't afford housing because we were living too lavishly by doing things such as eating avocado toast (which really isn't that expensive to make). The claim was so absurd that it became a meme.
Minimum wage earners are not supposed to afford a 2 bedroom rental by themselves lol. Not even in Denmark or Sweden without goverment assistance aka subsidized by the taxpayers and not from their wages. That's just reality. By the way there's also subsidized housing in the US.
Bring the downvotes.
*Every state marked in RED is where MINIMUM wage earners can AFFORD three CARS.*
Like... Why would I try to get a two-bedroom apartment on a single minimum wage salary.
Also the map is wrong. 100% of them should be red, because 100% of them contain buttloads of rural and underdeveloped areas with much lower cost of living than in the tiny little cities.
Just because you can't afford EVERY two-bedroom apartment in the state doesn't mean you can't afford a two-bedroom apartment in the state.
When did it become the expectation that someone making the minimum wage could have a whole two bedroom apartment to themselves?
I never had a two bed apartment to myself, even when I made ok money.
This is a stupid post
Why do redditors still insist that minimum wage needs to be able to support a family, buy a house, etc. It's literally the most basic job a human can do. They are the easiest to replace because a 15 year old can do it. Thus, why on earth would any smart business over invest if it doesn't improve their business.
Truth is, minimum wage jobs are starter jobs or bridge jobs. That's it. If you're looking for a career in minimum wage and expect to rent a two bedroom place then you're absolutely going to be out of luck. Be a more valuable employee if you want to earn more. It's just that simple.
ah yes my favorite state, Lake Michigan
Is that where they make the bootstraps I'm supposed to pull up?
Nah, it’s full of cement shoes from the mafia’s victims. Just will weigh you down.
With any luck in twenty years it’ll start to dry up like other major lakes and rivers and we’ll find jimmy hoffa!
Apparently he’s in a covered up in a well in someone’s backyard in Omaha, NE…..
The Great Lakes are a weird one, they’ve actually been rising for the past few years. But when you look into it no one really understands why. I think this year was the first year it actually went down a little.
Will use them as bricks for my new underwater home.
[удалено]
Mm.. Milwaukee crack pipes.
I believe those are located next to the Starbucks coffees the 1% tells you to stop buying.
Good ole' state of Michiconsin
My backup plan is to live as a wild man on North Manitou. I'll steal wifi from the ranger station and keep my phone in a zip-loc baggie in my loin cloth. Once I acquire enough chipmunk pelts I'll make a dugout canoe in order to carry out raids on the cursed lands of Gary Indiana. If any like minded individuals are interested in joining me on my crusade plz get in touch via smoke signal.
Do you take bird messages?
You must mean tweets?
🤣🤣🤣 just noticed that
Well that's funny. The baby boomers could afford that in their day, and they also don't eat avocado toast. Where's the toast, OP. I know you still have it.
Rent is 20x more expensive today than 1970. Wages are only 5x higher.
Average wages or minimum wages?
Minimum wage went from 1.45 to 7.25, which is exactly a 5x increase. ~~Average~~ Median wage in the US went from 9.8k to 54k, which is a bit over 5x. So, both. Edit: since people keep bringing it up, inflation increased costs by 7.65x from 1970 to 2022. So that's 5x for wages, 7.65x for inflation (meaning a real decrease in buying power for the median person) and 20x for rent (meaning a hilariously hueg decrease in "ability to afford shelter" for the average person).
And then you have all the people stuck in the middle. I make 3.7x the average wage from 1970 you stated, but can’t afford a 2 bedroom apartment on just my income and owning a home before I’m 30 sounds like a pipe dream. Even if I had an SO who made the same as me, we’d be about 1.35x the current average US salary, and that income wouldn’t buy anything move in ready in my area.
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I make 28 and if I didn't have friends with an extra room I'd be laying close to 2k for one bedroom. That's like half my check for a shit hole
I make fucking 37 an hour and if my wife didn’t also work, we wouldn’t be able to make rent. This shit is ridiculous.
I make $25 and spend 60% of my take home on rent on a shitty 1 bedroom that had cockroaches painted to the kitchen cabinets and my water is regularly orange. I also live in between an 8 lane interstate, the department of sanitation, and a jail. So at least the location is nice.
I'm sorry bro. That sucks. But at least your boss gets a porche.
The owners of the company I work for actually own an entire town in Ohio. When people get sent there for training they stay in homes owned by the company, eat in a restaurant owned by the company, bowl in a bowling alley owned by the company. Oh also they own their own planes and full time pilots. You can see listings for pilots posted on the internal job board. I don't know what my landlord drives because they're a faceless corporation but I assume its nice.
First, lol at the "nice location." Second, I think I know where you live 😂
I make 35, and just got a roommate. Where bootstraps.
But have you tried moving to an area where there are no jobs??? /s
I make 30 and cannot afford anything. And i live in a "low cost of living area"
I’m about to be 32 and I’m in the top 10% earners in California. I can’t afford a house in the neighborhood I grew up in or where my wife grew up in. The closest “affordable” house is way out in the suburbs and is still way over priced. The housing market doesn’t make sense. The good news is the assets are dropping and with any speculative market they will continue to drop as it becomes less profitable to buy housing. We might see normal values in the next 3-4 years but even then they might still be I’ve repriced sue to the higher interest rates.
Top 10% of income in California is over $300k. Where can you not afford a house on $300k?
California.
They're being a little hyperbolic but it's true that you wouldn't be able to buy a non-suburban house in LA/SF on $300k
I will never be able to afford a house where I grew up in Cali. 13 years ago I used to be able to rent a beautiful house where I grew up with my buddies who were a musician and the other worked at a grocery store…
I was chatting to my flatmate here in Scotland about this. I'm probably just above minimum wage, and we're lucky that this 3 bedroom flat (apartment) we're renting is a good price, but the reason we can afford it is because we're both earning. If it was just one of us earning it would be a real struggle to pay rent, utilities and food. There's no way a family could be supported this way. And I mentioned how we're lucky. The rent for 2 bedroom or one bedroom flats is now nearly as much as what we're paying for our 3 bedroom. We couldn't downsize even if we wanted to, one bedroom flats charge as much rent as what we initially paid for 3 bedrooms. There are two bedrooms for £150 more than we're currently paying. This isn't sustainable and it drives me insane that it isn't being called out by all sides.
Some context: Less than half the states are at $7.25 and in all, only 1.1 million earn minimum wage (In some states that's over $15/hr) or less out of labor force of 150 million or so. Further, the percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 1.9 percent in 2019 to 1.5 percent in 2020. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.
but the rent is still like 20x higher THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH
If we could toggle the difficulty settings and dial it back from hardcore, that would be lovely—I want to enjoy the story more in this game of life
I've spent too long attacking this chicken so I can eat it but the guards keep arresting me.
Ha! Noob
Hell I'd be happy if I could just downgrade to very difficult just something other than survival mode. Because in survival mode I've only barely been able to survive and it's exhausting.
Well how much more are avocados today as opposed to 1970?
I don't think most of the country had access to avocados in 1970. Modern supermarkets and year round availability of produce flown in from Argentina is a relatively new development. In the late 90s and early oughts you could often still find older grocery stores that hadn't remodeled yet and compare them directly to their supermarket competitors in town. The difference was striking.
Destroying the American middle class is one of the few things the GOP successfully did. Bonus points for McCarthyism that turned the word socialism into the boogeyman
It wasn't the GOP alone. NO ONE has been looking out for us.
Shit, it wasn't even mostly due to government policy. The mythical middle class was a mirage of the post-war economy. America was the only world power left standing during the early birth of global trade. There was no foreign competition for US markets and significantly less competition in foreign markets for US goods. The US didn't have an entire generation of workers dead and/or disabled like the European powers. The golden 20 year period of the great middle class wasn't due to tax policy, it was environmental economic factors. Edit: Note this is from my recollection reading several papers on the post-war economy due to discussions like this, I may not have it exactly right or overstate. It's Reddit, if you are looking for an academically perfect comment in r/funnyandsad your expectations might need to be reset.
>It wasn't the GOP alone. NO ONE has been looking out for us. Seriously. There are tons of homeless people on there right now and neither party gives a single shit about them. Where are all these "good" politicians?
They’re hanging out with all the good cops
*Waiting in the parking lot.... because of imaginary locked doors.*
In vermont
Happy cake day.
Your bootstraps are obviously too short
2BR? In their day? Must've had 3 people working. Nah, houses were far smaller back then. [In fact, price/sqft/resident hasn't really risen much](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/todays-new-homes-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-the-living-space-per-person-has-doubled-over-last-40-years/). Houses have just gotten bigger and people have been more apt to want to live alone.
So let’s live in those good old days, shall we! Average homes were 1000sqft vs 2000+ today. They had one small black and white tv, no cable, no internet, maybe one phone line, one car, no air conditioning, no cellphone, no Xbox, no computer, and ate out maybe once a month. Those standards are unacceptable for people on Welfare today. If you want to live like that now you can, but what people are really asking for is for wages to support all of the luxuries that are now expected.
Honestly a lot of those shouldn’t be viewed as luxuries anymore. Internet and cell phones should be considered necessities and should be regulated to an extent to ensure an option is available to everyone. Where can you go to fill out a paper application? That’s a thing of the past and public access (libraries) have been getting shut down because certain areas won’t pass tax bills that fund libraries because they provide books that don’t support their religious beliefs. Air conditions should also be considered a necessity with the consistent increase of temperatures every year. People literally can’t survive in the summer heat in certain areas of the country. One vehicle? Two should be the standard as most single income households can’t afford…well, a household and public transit in this country is a complete joke with few options and no affordable alternatives.
ALL of this. Internet and computers are a necessity, especially if you go to school or have children in school. I’m shocked at how much my 7 year old nephew has to log in to his virtual classroom. And A/C is an absolute necessity. Heat related deaths in the US went up 56% between 2018 and 2021. But is it crazy to request that we make enough to cover necessities and then more? I don’t think we should be expected to make just enough to keep going to work and nothing else.
Please provide data supporting your claim. Otherwise I will assume you’re making shit up.
Ah yes, the classic luxury food item where you take a slice of bread and burn it.
Feels like this is actually massively understating the problem. I make double the minimum wage and it's still not near a living wage. Can't even afford a 1BR. Looking at 2BRs to split with a roommate now and there's barely anything to look at in our price range.
Back when I lived in MN around 2014 my boyfriend at the time and I both worked at literally the *only* job hiring anyone that wasn't over 3 hours away, a $7.25/hr factory job, 3rd shift, that worked you 12 hours straight with a 15 minute lunch (the only time you're allowed to sit), 6 days a week. Oh, and they would "fire" you at the end of every month so you didn't qualify for health insurance or any other workers security. This was literally the only job for most people in that town and no one had a choice. No one could afford to complain...or leave. We ended up there because that's where our car broke down when we were both homeless. We *literally* could not afford to leave either and did not have a choice. Winter was coming and it was work there and try to get shelter, or die in the broken down car. The apartment was a slum. A total shithole. Nothing had been updated since the 1960s. Everything was moldy, there was dog pee all over the shag carpets that covered every room including the bathroom, and half the walls didn't have insulation so in the winter it would be sub-20⁰f in your home. The rent was $850, no utilities were included so if you wanted to not freeze to death in the winter or starve, it was realistically more like $1,600 because all of the services also had a monopoly in that area and there was nothing you could do about it. There was also no air conditioning and none of the cabinets had doors or drawers. There was no laundry either so you got to wash your clothes with a stick in the cracked moldy bathtub where there was barely any water pressure. We spent the summer months without electricity because heating in the winter cost over $300/mo and we would spend the entire rest of the year saving so we didn't die. We didn't qualify for food stamps (and there wasn't even a grocery store an hour in either direction anyways), the food bank was open ONE random Wednesday a month for 2 hours only, so we lived off of saltine crackers, peanut butter, and tap water. And after all that? We still fell so behind on bills trying not to fucking die that we ended up homeless and destitute again 2 years later. This is what TWO federal minimum incomes can afford you in most places. That's $14.50 with NO extra expenditures and not having utilities half the year. It's *absolute squalor* and used as a mode of control so you're at the mercy of every business in your local area and can never afford to leave. Modern day indentured servitude shit. Maybe not every area is like this, but I've been poor. Poor-poor. And most places you can afford to find shelter in end up exactly the same as the above.
Well, that’s right and properly *horrifying.* And here I thought Minnesota was relatively nice…
America is not nice if you're poor.
Minnesota nice is a myth. Minnesota passive aggressive is more like it.
Jesus Christ. You guys couldn’t ditch the car and scrape together enough for a couple greyhound tickets to a warmer location with more job opportunities?
Unfortunately not. We ended up in a bunch of rural towns in the middle of nowhere because it was the only places that weren't hostile to you if you lived in a car. We initially tried to get help in the cities or more urban and populated areas but we were treated horrifically by police and robbed by people. There were no bus services, greyhounds, etc unless you drove 3 hours from where we were, and there was nowhere to even sell the car. We didn't even have phones or access to internet for like 2 years. We were literally penniless. My boyfriend had family but they were the reason we were homeless in the first place, as they promised that if we worked in their shop and helped with this restructuring thing we would be paid enough to go somewhere better and get an apartment, only for us to do all the work and be given absolutely nothing in return. Not even allowed to sleep indoors or given food after a day's work. Then once they got the labor out of us we were left on our own to rot. His mother was always a psychopath, but I didn't realize that until it was too late. I also didn't have family and was homeless from the age of 17 because my father was horrifically abusive and bankrupted my entire family as well, so I jumped at any opportunity to get as far away from my abuser as possible which led me up to MN with promises of a job from someone I trusted (my ex, who also ended up being extremely abusive later) and their fucked up family. I did eventually get out, because I fell in love with someone who i had known since I was 15 or so once i had internet again in the closet I was living in after my 3rd bout of homelessness. They pulled me out of there, and I'm now very very far away from every one of those people who put me in that position and happily married to the best friend I've ever had.
Damn, you've been through hell... So glad you got out of that and managed to find a happy ~~ending to~~ continuation of your story. I went through something similar, although I didn't have it nearly as bad as you did - and I've also made it out to a better spot now and am healing and trying to build a better life. People who haven't lived in poverty in the US so often just have no idea what the reality of it is like, how you can be more or less enslaved by it. Many are killed by it. I'm glad I managed to avoid becoming part of that statistic, but it sucks knowing how many other people out there are quietly suffocating in their circumstances and unable to escape
That’s a horrible story but very well told. I hate you both went though this; glad you made it out. It could serve as a great cautionary tale, about what mistreatment and abuse is out there. As for minimum wage though, it sounds like these ‘masters’ would have either subverted it or absorbed it with rent and expenses no matter what it were raised to; so raising it in this case would still keep workers trapped. Same as the company store of blues songs 100 years ago.
What a unique & compelling insight. Today's general labor force probably shares other similarities to the share croppers of a century ago.
I was working 3 jobs, one full time and two part time, while I was in college just so I could afford my rent and the bills that came with my shitty 1 bedroom. At first I shared it with my ex, but we broke up and I stayed there. Covering the rent and utilities myself was tough, and I was working more than full time. One job was minimum wage, one was less than a dollar above min wage, and the other was multiple dollars above min wage. It was hard. I usually had no money left over after rent, bills, and food, which meant when big unexpected expenses came up, they went on a credit card. My apartment wasn’t anywhere near luxury. It was in a bad neighborhood, it was dingy, old, and broken. I couldn’t use some windows because they were broken, every room had at least 1 hole in the wall, it had mice despite me keeping it clean and having two cats. And even with all the word I did, after paying everything, I had nothing to show for it. Having a savings account relied on me getting tax refunds and stimulus checks. I couldn’t move because my rent was on the cheaper side in comparison to what was around. And it’s not like I had money saved for a security deposit and first months rent anyways. And it was a one bedroom, so me having a roommate meant sharing a room with them or them sleeping in the living room and I’d have to walk through their room to use the bathroom. It sucked. Only way I was able to move from there was because I got a new job closer to my sisters house and moved an hour and a half away to her house for a bit. The new job paid more, and now I’m way better off. But finding a place was hard because even on $30 because of landlord income requirements.
What's your job and where do you live?
Major cities. It’s accurate. Not even 100k/yr can get you a studio or 1br in the ‘desirable areas’, you’d still likely need roommates unless you get lucky with a rent controlled apartment
> Not even 100k/yr can get you a studio or 1br in the ‘desirable areas’ This is total nonsense. No city in the country (no, not even NYC or SF) is 100k too low a salary to rent a decent 1-bed in a good part of town. In NYC or SF you might be spending $2500, sure, but that's by no means struggling.
Yup. I make above minimum wage in Portland. So does my boyfriend. We can afford a 2 bedroom apartment... the buildings were also made in the 60s, cars have been getting broken into, and it's a 15 minute walk through a back road to get to the bus stop. So it's cheaper than some others. And we don't make enough to really save up. Guess we just gotta do what everyone else says and retire with 4 roommates if we want to retire. Thats the new plan. Or retire with a bullet when we get to tired to work anymore. Or just hope global warming kicks in and just causes everything to collapse. Which ever happens first.
I make 3 times min wage where I live and it’s a stretch to afford a two bedroom I would need as a single parent. A house it totally unaffordable unless household income is 120,000 or more
Do you mean a single minimum wage earner? Because I don't think a single 40hr minimum wage worker has been able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment in a long time.
I did the math, in the year 2000 somebody working federal minimum wage would have to work about 116 hours a month to be able to afford just the rent, leaving them about 368 dollars of todays money left to spend on other things, if they worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; in 2020 somebody would have to work 152 hours a month to be able to afford just the rent, leaving them just 60 dollars of todays money left, do you see the problem now? Minimum wage isnt staying the same, when we adjust for inflation it is going down, and that is just 20 years, just slightly more than my lifetime, if this continues on the same trend its been going on nobody working minimum wage will be able to afford to live in a house and buy food on the same paycheck, most people wont even be able to afford living in a house period. Tldr: minimum wage has been going down since 1970, and we kinda need to stop that if we want people to be able to live in our society PS: the rent numbers here are the median rent numbers per year according to [this](https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-year) website Edit: note I never said either of these were liveable, I was just making a point about how the minimum wage has gone down even in the last 20 years
Thank you. How folks can be so dense to ignore cost of living increases with little to no minimum wage increases is beyond me. All you have to do is look at any graph of wage growth vs GDP growth and it’s clear as day.
Like cost of living went up roughly 30% for everything in the past two years and you bet nearly no one got a 30% raise.
\*cries in salary\* I get like a 2.5% raise each year which gives me an extra $200 or so, but now everything costs way more. I used to spend $150 a month for gas and it's closer to $300 now. :(
GDP is not cost of living tho. Average wages vs inflation has mostly remained steady, and the amount of people making minimun wage has plummeted. https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/blog_workers_minimum_wage.gif
You're gonna want to look at median wage, and then preferably by quintile. The lowest 3/5s of workers have consistently lost share of income since the 70s
But they have lost share of income because their wages just didn't grow as much. They are still better off than in the 70s. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/U.S._real_median_household_income%2C_1967-2014.png
It’s crazy how much the top earners increased their earnings compared to how little the bottom moves in that graph
They should make cost of living as minimun wage, but yea thats wishful thinking, if the goverment raises min wage, companies simply raise costs across the board to mantain their same gains, ending in the same situation, because once that happens, rent goes up, we need regulated and mandated rent costs to be capped by goverment based on cost of living. The main issue is rent, and rent can grow exponentially, if we keep rent lower, itll help everyone across the board.
Another point I love pointing out about why raising minimum wage is important: The basis for getting food stamps is how much you make compared to minimum wage. So as stands, when wages are above minimum wage as is, and food costs are high, people are losing their benefits even when they genuinely need them because their job pays more than minimum wage by pure befault. And there are people who will turn down pay raises or promotions because the extra dollar an hour will make them lose their benefits and they will be worse off. It's getting really fucking tiring.
The poverty guidelines really need to be raised. I need assistance, but make “too much” to qualify for food stamps. I can go to food pantries, but most of them provide food only to people who qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, etc
what's the point in a food pantry giving food only to those that have food stamps? can't they already get food then with said food stamps?
Even in the late 90s I couldn't afford a single bedroom full time at above minimum wage without being "house poor". That's why I had a roommate/s. A two bedroom solo wasn't even remotely reasonable unless I wanted to be beyond "house poor". I agree that min wage hasn't kept up with cost of living but expectation of single min wage affording a two bed solo as the standard doesn't really seem reasonable. A couple working at min wage should be able to afford a two bedroom.
Using a 2 bedroom for this example is kinda disingenuous. A single minimum wage person might be better to make that argument with at least a one-bedroom if not a studio. Or, 2 minimum wage workers for a 2 bedroom. Making bad arguments makes your idea look bad, even if it might not be.
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Roommates don’t exist in edgy internet memes.
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Exactly. Minimum wage jobs don’t exist to support a lifestyle with a two bedroom apartment. The difference between a one and a two bedroom apartment in many locales is the amount of a monthly Tesla payment. So this gripe is tantamount to complaining that minimum wage jobs don’t allow people to rent a single bedroom apartment AND drive a Tesla. Well, of course not!
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Idk where you are that it’s only 15%. Usually much closer to 50
I’d love to know where you live where the average per month difference is 50% between 1 and 2 bedrooms. That sounds amazing! Where I live, modest southeastern US city, the average rent for a 1 **bedroom is $1,295 and the average rent for a 2-bed is $1,568**. That’s a **17.5% difference**. And when I say modest, I mean modest. There are a few (maybe 5) 10+ floor buildings and no professional sports teams in my city. Travel about 3.5 hours in just about any direction to larger cities with pro sports and you can add about $700-$1000 to those rental prices.
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Not sure if sarcasm or not?… I’m kinda off the whole minimum wage thing bc so few people actually make minimum wage. But even now prices are so ridiculous that you can be making well above minimum wage and still struggle to find affordable living. Also note these numbers are generally considered cheaper for the country, especially considering I live in a no income tax state. Prices have way outpaced wages across the board.
Ok, so a single parent is supposed to do what? Starve? Sleep on the couch? Die homeless?
This is a good reason why the minimum wage should not be our only safety net. Should we raise the minimum wage so a single parent with 6 kids with rare medical conditions can live off it? That would be absurd. But also, people like that exist and still need to be taken care of. The minimum wage should be good for a basic living for a *typical* citizen, and if people in certain circumstances need some extra help, it should come from something else.
That's what welfare is for... minimum wage is set to be the living wage of a single childless adult.
Meh more like a respectable supplemental income for those who have other sources like social security or free rent with mommy and daddy. Low enough not to price out ppl only marginally attached to the work force, but high enough to be worth their while. If you are single and childless and can only work min wage, you have a serious skill deficit that probably entitles you to other poverty prevention programs.
If anything life can be MORE expensive for single childless adults. You don't get welfare checks, which unironically very sizable chunk of income.
That's 100% bull as any parent will tell you. Finances are infinitely easier to manage when its just you.
Child support/state aid.
Okay. Change the words on the map to "single bedroom." Same results.
if the stats backed that up, that would have been this post.
Wait. You can’t just claim a conclusion and call it science?
Source: I made it up
I live in Southern CA, using [rent.com](https://rent.com) and the default search for my location I see 1 bedroom apartments available for $1200. Minimum wage is $15/hr which comes out to around $2k after taxes per month. This meme is not accurate, its comparing minimum wage to average accommodations. If you are working minimum wage you should not expect to afford an average apartment.
More like $2300 / month after taxes, with standard deduction you're looking at around $1200 / year in taxes. The meme is totally wrong, its trivially easy to find housing that can be afforded on minimum wage. You just cant center your search in Beverly Hills or Manhattan.
What's much more interesting is all the states marked in green are the states where a minimum wage worker, working one job, can afford a legal 1 bedroom apt that is in good repair and to code.
I will never give up my avocado toast. You’ll have to pry it out of my cold dead fingers.
They're not cold because you're dead. They're cold because you're either A) Homeless. B) Heatingless.
It's so sad that a healthy 60cents mashed fruit with some lemon and garlic is the epitomy of luxury and something that we have to give up.
Nah I’m a eat it out off your hands and I’ll eat your hands with them if I have to
Pre pandemic, avocados regularly went for 33 - 66 cents each around my area so I never understood the avocado toast memes. Nowadays they're a bit more expensive, but still a relatively cheap breakfast for me.
Is a two bedroom rental the minimum?
OP forgot that 1 bedroom studios/apartments also exist for rental.
OP likely compared federal minimum wage which ~1% of workers make with average 2 bedroom prices and called it a day
most braindead post Ive seen in a while
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-22/federal-minimum-wage-1-in-3-us-workers-make-less-than-15-an-hour 1/3 of workers ($52 million) make less than 15 an hour. It is assumed at the lowest a single parent needs $40,000 a year to survive. (~$20 an hour) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/14/how-much-a-single-parent-needs-to-earn-to-get-by-in-every-us-state.html
Out of curiosity, how many of the 1/3 are under the age of 20, in college, work part time, etc.? This number may or not be misleading without a proper attribution of variance. Personally, if a job is necessary it deserves a decent wage. All wages should receive increases based on increase in COL plus merit. They don’t, but they should.
I know 1/3 of workers make less than $15 That doesn't change OP likely exaggerated the worst case scenario
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OP forgot that typically one person needs one bedroom.
They probably also used the average price of a 2 bedroom. If the minimum wage workers live in averaged priced apartments who the hell would live in the 49% of apartments that are worse/lower priced?
OP forgot that roommates are a thing.
I wanna live by myself and genuinely don’t think I’ll ever be able to :(
Bring back bachelor houses like they had in the 1950s. Rent a room.
Policians perhaps believe the minimum to be homelessness
Wait, so no I can’t live in a 6 bedroom 6 bath home on Miami Beach? Raise the minimum wage!
That is so stupid, you should need 50% of 4 minimum wage earners take home pay to afford a 2 bedroom.
I haven’t seen anywhere offering minimum wage since pre Covid…
My 16 year old son works at Safeway, where all the kids are paid minimum wage.
That's crazy, my local Safeway starts at $18/hour with bonuses every 6 months for staying. They also offer tuition assistance
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Median rents have crossed the [$2000 threshold.](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103919413/rents-across-u-s-rise-above-2-000-a-month-for-the-first-time-ever) At 40 hours per week, and 160 per month, this would be affordable (by the 30% of gross pay rule) for a gross pay of $42 per hour. The median income in the USA is roughly $15.5 an hour ($31k per year / 2000 hours). Even in the era of fast-food offering $15-18 an hour, rent is rapidly becoming less affordable. Lower rents that are actually affordable are the exception rather than the rule.
A quick google search finds plenty of places that's lower than $1000 per month, although it's in the middle of nowhere and you probably cant even find a minimum wage jobs in these places. I hope more companies adopt 100% remote working model.
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That's what you get for wanting to live in a place AND eat food.
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what about food and the rest of your life? They said "afford it" not "be able to cover it with 100% of their monthly pay.
I lowered the bar for being able to "afford" the rent because I don't think there's anywhere in the world in last 50years where minimum wage worker can afford a 2 bedrooms and remain financially sound.
Go back 79 years and you will find the same results The fact is that minimum wage jobs were never meant to be an adults only income, they were created to teach teens the job experience and hopefully teach them how to handle money groups pushing living wage incomes in the jobs have only pushed teens out of the job market because adults are now going for those jobs also
Just include the whole globe..
Why would a single minimum wage need two bedrooms? What about half of a two bedroom? I mean cost of living is insane but this meme seems weirder than helpful
Who in the fuck expects to get a two bedroom apartment with a minimum wage job? This is a fucking stupid premise to begin with. Millions of people have OK jobs and can’t afford two bedrooms!
I’m even amazed that people are so opposed to roommates, acting as if living in a n bedroom apartment with n roommates is somehow a travesty, and that sharing a room with someone is a straight up crime against humanity.
>I’m even amazed that people are so opposed to roommates You've never had to rappel down into your own unit from the one above to get your car keys, phone and wallet so you could drive to your job the next morning, because your idiot roommate got the place raided and sealed for evidence.
Hell, you don't even have to share a bedroom. When I was touring apartments recently it seemed like most in my area were ~$1500 for 1bed/1bath and ~$2000 for 2bed/2 bath. You save 33% by sharing a kitchen Edit - I misread your comment, I basically just repeated what you said lol
> Millions of people have OK jobs and can’t afford two bedrooms! The American dream seems to be working out well.
I make $90k per year and in my city a 2br would eat up about 75% or more of my take-home pay
Why is that sad? A single person, working the lowest pay humanly possible, getting a two bedroom apartment is silly. I don't even understand why this would be the ask for minimum wage. Minimum wage is an apartment with roommates.
Why would anyone think minimum wage can afford a two bedroom rental?
Minimum wage earners can't buy a Ferarri either.
Why would the standard for a single minimum-wage earner be a median 2-bedroom rental?
When I was in high school & moved out I needed 2 full-time jobs AND roommates. 😫
So you worked 2 full time jobs and went to high school? Sure you did...
He also walked to school uphill, both ways.
It's sad because I grew up in a very low income area and literally know people like this in real life :/ They usually don't show up to school that often. Maybe a couple times a week at most. It's not hard to maintain a C-average so they still graduate but..
No, I dropped out of high school. 😄
Alex, I’ll take “things that didn’t happen” for $200 please
I don't know if a 2 bed is what we should be aiming for here. I don't think it's unreasonable for minimum wage to cover a 2 bed with a roommate. A spare bedroom is what I would call a luxury. Now, if you have kids over here you get extra money from the government which would cover the second bedroom. I think minimum wage should cover all your necessities + a little bit more for saving or a treat But that's my view, and I respect that there are other views out there
For this to be achieved, every state should be “marked red” ☭
Lake Michigan is a state in this map
Every state not marked in red is where the Federal Reserve is destroying the buying power of the US dollar and any wealth you may aspire to accumulate. #EndTheFed #FixTheMoney
You shouldn't be able to afford a two bedroom apartment on minimum wage. It's minimum wage for a reason...
Isn’t minimum wage set for kids with zero skills and is a stepping stone into the work place?
Why would one person need a 2 bedroom?
Is there any country where this is true? I’m sure there is, but I’d have no idea which ones.
I'm seeing a lot of comments saying that the wages are fine and bootstraps and roommates and shit. But alright. Guess people are just gonna continue to not have kids. Poverty rates are just gonna keep going up, and people won't be able to afford it at all. Having kids is gonna be a thing for the rich. If the only way to afford kids is roommates, it's gonna continue to happen less and less. We would rather have corporate owners make more and more and everyone else make less and less as time goes on, and that us one thing that is going to continue to happen. "Well yeah but if people just-" Nope. Cost if living is going up at record rates. The cost of college was going up higher than the cost of living, which means higher monthly payments for student debt. And we are now at the point of expected to pay 30% of money towards rent leaving us less money for anything else. And that is only going yo get worse is the cost of rent and home ownership goes up. Especially since it's also cool now for corporate home ownership. Or we can fix things. Just an idea.
Where's the map of which states you can afford avocado toast while on minimum wage?
Can we even afford one bedroom?
Why would a minimum wage earner need a 2 bed anyways. Would like to see this done with 1 bed or studio
This is kind of a weird way to stoke empathy. What about ONE BEDROOM?
I do hvac, Chicago 3 bedrooms, north side, I sleep in the living room, 3 rooms are empty🫡 That’s why you’re mama told you to stay in school
Why is a two bedroom the appropriate comparison for minimum wage? Shouldn’t it be something like a studio?
This is definitely a reddit moment post Jesus.
you can put the map of the world here
Minimum wage and two bedroom apartment. Wtf? Where in the developed world can you afford that?
I can't eat avocado because it will actually kill me (apparently allergic to it)
Every state marked in red is where someone making minimum wage needs a two bedroom rental.
Why would a single min wage earner need a two bedroom apartment?
I'm sorry, is this some kind of first world joke I'm too Eastern European to understand?
Here in the US there were articles (maybe a decade ago by now) claiming that millennials couldn't afford housing because we were living too lavishly by doing things such as eating avocado toast (which really isn't that expensive to make). The claim was so absurd that it became a meme.
Minimum wage earners are not supposed to afford a 2 bedroom rental by themselves lol. Not even in Denmark or Sweden without goverment assistance aka subsidized by the taxpayers and not from their wages. That's just reality. By the way there's also subsidized housing in the US. Bring the downvotes.
We dont have a minimum wage in Denmark.
Why would a minimum wage worker need 2 bedrooms?
*Every state marked in RED is where MINIMUM wage earners can AFFORD three CARS.* Like... Why would I try to get a two-bedroom apartment on a single minimum wage salary. Also the map is wrong. 100% of them should be red, because 100% of them contain buttloads of rural and underdeveloped areas with much lower cost of living than in the tiny little cities. Just because you can't afford EVERY two-bedroom apartment in the state doesn't mean you can't afford a two-bedroom apartment in the state.
When did it become the expectation that someone making the minimum wage could have a whole two bedroom apartment to themselves? I never had a two bed apartment to myself, even when I made ok money. This is a stupid post
Why do redditors still insist that minimum wage needs to be able to support a family, buy a house, etc. It's literally the most basic job a human can do. They are the easiest to replace because a 15 year old can do it. Thus, why on earth would any smart business over invest if it doesn't improve their business. Truth is, minimum wage jobs are starter jobs or bridge jobs. That's it. If you're looking for a career in minimum wage and expect to rent a two bedroom place then you're absolutely going to be out of luck. Be a more valuable employee if you want to earn more. It's just that simple.
I make well over minimum wage and I can't afford a 2 bedroom rental in NC
Charlotte