{"id":37746,"date":"2025-07-26T02:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T02:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/37746\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T02:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T02:25:08","slug":"americans-spend-an-entire-weeks-worth-of-pay-on-rent-every-month-and-in-some-cities-a-full-two-weeks-of-income-is-just-going-to-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/37746\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans spend an entire week’s worth of pay on rent every month\u2014and in some cities, a full two weeks of income is just going to housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to imagine today, but about 17 years ago, rent for Americans was less than $1,000 per month. In 2008, the median rent was just $824 per month; today it\u2019s more than $1,300\u2014and many major metropolitan areas like New York City<\/a> and Los Angeles<\/a> dwarf that figure. Between 2022 and 2025 alone, rents jumped nearly 6%.<\/p>\n

That also means Americans are spending much more<\/a> of their monthly income on housing. Although it\u2019s generally recommended not to spend more than a third of one\u2019s income on housing, many Americans are shelling out much more than that. That\u2019s largely due to rent prices rising faster than wage growth<\/a> in the U.S.<\/p>\n

A recent Self Financial analysis<\/a> of housing data from the U.S. Census, Apartment List, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Federal Reserve illustrates how many hours worth of work Americans are spending on housing each month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On average, Americans need to work 38.3 hours to cover their monthly rent, which works out to the average work week. But there\u2019s a decent spread on the number of work hours needed to pay for rent across the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vermont residents need to work 60.2 hours per month to meet the average monthly rental costs, the highest of any state, according to the Self Financial analysis. People living in South Dakota need just 27.6 hours to cover rent, placing them in the lowest spot. Unsurprisingly, New York City residents need to work the most hours to pay rent at 90.2 hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These are the five U.S. states with the highest number of hours required to cover the average monthly rent:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vermont: 60.2 hours<\/p>\n

Hawaii: 59.9 hours<\/p>\n

California: 52.4 hours<\/p>\n

New Jersey: 50.4 hours<\/p>\n

Maryland: 50.3 hours<\/p>\n

And these are the five U.S. states with the fewest number of hours required to cover the average monthly rent:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maine: 32.3 hours<\/p>\n

North Dakota: 32.2 hours<\/p>\n

Alabama: 31.4 hours<\/p>\n

Arkansas: 31.1 hours<\/p>\n

South Dakota: 27.6 hours<\/p>\n

See the heat map below, which shows the number of hours required to cover the monthly rent in each state. To see the number of hours, hover over each state. Deeper red indicates a higher number of hours.<\/p>\n

While this may appear to be a grim outlook for rental housing in the U.S., there is a small glimmer of hope. As of May, median U.S. asking rent had actually dropped about 1% year-over-year, according to<\/a> Redfin. That\u2019s because apartment construction is hovering near a 50-year high<\/a>, Redfin economists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though renter demand is strong, it\u2019s not keeping pace with supply,\u201d said Sheharyar Bokhari<\/a>, Redfin senior economist. \u201cMany units are sitting vacant for months, which means renters have power to negotiate concessions and landlords have less leeway to keep rents high.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it\u2019s still much cheaper to rent than to buy a home in the U.S. thanks to sky-high mortgage rates nearing 7% and home prices that are 55% higher than at the beginning of 2020, according to the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index.<\/p>\n

Take Austin, Texas, for example. \u201cMany people in Austin are finding that it\u2019s a lot cheaper to rent than buy,\u201d Austin real-estate agent Andrew Vallejo recently told Fortune<\/a>. \u201cYou could buy a home and have a monthly mortgage payment of $3,200, but the same home will rent for $1,900. Unless the buyer has a good amount of money for a down payment, renting is way less expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to imagine today, but about 17 years ago, rent for Americans was less than $1,000 per…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[30796,30797,28,101,2053,25744],"class_list":{"0":"post-37746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-apartment-rent","9":"tag-apartment-rentals","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-housing-costs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}