General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: WOW: In No State Is a 40-Hour, Minimum Wage Work Week Enough to Afford a Two-Bedroom Apartment [View all]They are using a hypothetical amount of hours that a minimum wage worker would need to work in order to reasonably afford a 2 bedroom apartment based on the state they live in. The question then becomes what kind of calculation did they go by to base what "reasonable" is?... Chances are, they used the type of income to debt ratio (or income to 'cost' -as in the case of an apartment) that banks typically use (or used to use) to determine if a prospective home buyer is a safe bet for a mortgage loan. IIRC, it was 33% for my SO and I back when we bought our place in 1997.
As an aside, most people do not work 74 hours a week (or whatever it is in your state). Not saying they don't want to; often they can't get that many hours, even IF it is 1, 2 or 3 crappy minimum wage jobs combined... For example, job-A) may give 22 one week, job-B) 30 and job-C)16.
Here is why: Most people who work minimum wage jobs are beholden to their employers to work whatever shift and how many hours the employer needs out of them. It's very common for these employers to rarely offer any sort of consistent set of hours or even any consistent day, or time of day--- Therefore to get those 74 hours in, a minimum wage worker has to try to juggle their 2 or 3 job schedules the best they can or face termination.