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A comment on U.S. rent has increased 175% faster than household income over past 20 years. Parent comment

Re:U.S. rent has increased 175% faster than household income... by rsj_hn on Friday March 26, 2021 @03:46PM (#26596141)
You are off by a factor of fifty. That's like confidently announcing that US median household income is 3.4 million, or declaring that the US has a population of 16 Billion people. How do you react when people hold such crazy views?

Here is a recent BLS study called "Characteristics of minimum wage workers" https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm

"In 2019, 82.3 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 392,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.2 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.6 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.9 percent of all hourly paid workers."

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Re:U.S. rent has increased 175% faster than household income... by ultrasaurus on Friday March 26, 2021 @04:56PM (#26596844)
Just eyeballing it looks like only 25% of the US population lives in states where the federal minimum wage is also the prevailing minimum wage: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state

So I'd guess closer to 10% of people make the minimum wage in their jurisdiction (1.9% x 4 + I assume more people make min wage when it's higher)

Very interesting though that 3x as many people make below the min wage as actually earn the "minimum" wage.

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Re:U.S. rent has increased 175% faster than household income... by rsj_hn on Friday March 26, 2021 @05:03PM (#26596906)
Those below the minimum wage are exempt workers such as waiters because they earn tips, and I guarantee you that their real income (on average) is much higher than minimum wage, but data is hard to come by as much of that income is unreported. Thus the 2% figure is a generous over-estimate.
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