Minimum wage workers must work more than 140 hours to afford rent in Georgia

For the roughly 1.4 million people living in Georgia, a minimum wage earner would wish to work almost 4 jobs — or more than 140 hours per week — to pay their monthly rent.

In Georgia, where the minimum wage is not any higher than the present federal standard of $7.23, the median hourly income is $23.44, meaning that a zero-bedroom apartment shouldn’t be reasonably priced for those earning the state’s median hourly wage. To find a way to pay rent based on Georgia’s standard minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, landlords and rental firms would have to set rent at $377 a month.

New study conducted The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) ranks Georgia because the twentieth state with the very best housing wage requirement in the United States. To afford an apartment in the Peach State, the 2024 Out of Reach report reveals that an individual would potentially have to work up to 3.5 minimum wage jobs.

According to the NLIHC, Georgians would wish to work between 140 and 238 hours to afford rent for one- to four-bedroom apartments. With the present seven-day, 168-hour workweek, that’s nearly unimaginable. Furthermore, according to the Out of Reach report, an individual would only have 28 hours of free time per week to keep their rent under current standards.

Currently, according to Fair Market Rent (FMR), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers prices starting from $1,272 to $2,242 as the common price of an apartment, depending on the variety of bedrooms. Currently, actual rental costs don’t reflect FMR.

While this report is in regards to the state of Georgia as a complete, it can be crucial to note that rental markets vary across the various cities that make up the Peach State, including Atlanta, Savannah, Albany, and lots of others. Housing vouchers implemented by the federal government, in addition to local and state rental assistance programs in various cities across the state, are only a number of of the ways current Georgia officials try to ease concerns about rental costs and the impact they’ve on residents.