The National Housing Conference’s Center for Housing Policy (CHP) released its 2015 edition of Paycheck to Paycheck. This year’s report examines housing affordability for workers in five occupations that are growing sectors of the economy and that represent the kinds of jobs held by many millennials aged 18 to 33. The report finds that many millennials work in occupations that do not provide adequate wages to afford housing in their metropolitan area.
The report examines housing affordability in 208 metropolitan areas for five occupations: administrative assistants, retail cashiers, e-commerce customer service representatives, food service managers, and cardiac technicians. The table below provides the number of metropolitan areas (out of 208) where the median wage worker in each occupation could afford to rent or buy a typical two-bedroom home without spending more than 30% of his or her income on housing.
Median Wage Worker in Occupation: | # of Metropolitan Areas (n=208) where Typical Two-Bedroom Home is Affordable to Rent | # of Metropolitan Areas (n=208) where Typical Two-Bedroom Home is Affordable to Buy |
Retail Cashiers | 0 | 0 |
E-commerce Customer Service | 85 | 34 |
Cardiac Technician | 145 | 73 |
Administrative Assistant | 171 | 90 |
Food Service Manager | 203 | 159 |
Source: Viveiros, Ault, and Sturtevant. (2015). Paycheck to Paycheck: A Snapshot of Affordability for Millennial Workers. Washington, DC: National Housing Conference, Center for Housing Policy
CHP also updated the Paycheck to Paycheck on-line database which allows users to compare housing costs and wages for 81 occupations. These data are available for more than 200 metropolitan areas.
Paycheck to Paycheck draws from National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and National Association of Realtors (NAR) data on median home prices, HUD’s 2015 Fair Market Rent data for rental costs, and IBM’s Salary.com for wages for an intermediate-level worker, typically with two to four years of experience.
Paycheck to Paycheck 2015: A Snapshot of Housing Affordability for Millennial Workers is available at http://bit.ly/1YSF2Bw
The Paycheck to Paycheck database is available at http://www2.nhc.org/chp/p2p/