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Minimum-wage hours for 2BR rent.
Hours of work per week at the general state minimum wage needed to keep HUD’s two-bedroom Fair Market Rent at 30% of gross income. Lower means that this county’s HUD rent benchmark consumes fewer minimum-wage work hours. It is not a household budget: it excludes taxes, utilities, child care and every other expense. The wage is the U.S. Department of Labor’s listed state rate; local ordinances, employer-size rules, tipped work and occupation exemptions can differ, so this is a consistent state-law comparison rather than a promise of any worker’s pay.
Missouri has the lowest published minimum-wage housing in this comparison, at 58.4 hr/wk. The next states shown are Nebraska (60.9 hr/wk) and South Dakota (70.8 hr/wk).
The table orders 51 states by minimum-wage hours for 2br rent. It describes one published measure, not an overall judgment about where to live.
Use the result as a starting point, then compare the underlying source, dates, and local county figures before making a decision. Hours of work per week at the general state minimum wage needed to keep HUD’s two-bedroom Fair Market Rent at 30% of gross income. Lower means that this county’s HUD rent benchmark consumes fewer minimum-wage work hours. It is not a household budget: it excludes taxes, utilities, child care and every other expense. The wage is the U.S. Department of Labor’s listed state rate; local ordinances, employer-size rules, tipped work and occupation exemptions can differ, so this is a consistent state-law comparison rather than a promise of any worker’s pay.
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<iframe src="https://movermath.com/embed/minimum-wage-housing" width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy" title="Minimum-wage hours for 2BR rent by state"></iframe>Source: U.S. Department of Labor; HUD Fair Market Rent. · How this is built