The great poet-sage Jay-Z once said of New York City: "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere." Well, I got news for you: Increasingly, in New York City, you can't make it:
In most American cities, minimum wage workers can clock in more than 50 hours a week and can afford rent on a one-bedroom home. But New York City tells an entirely different story.
Rent is so absurdly high across the five boroughs that minimum-wage workers would need to work no fewer than 111 hours per week just to afford a one-bedroom, according to a recent survey by United Way.
The minimum wage in New York City stands at $15, and average rents for an apartment in Manhattan run $4,000 per month.
Just think of how many hours you're gonna have to put in at the Wall Street All-U-Can-Eat Buffet solely to have a roof over your head every month.
It really bears repeating just how insanely high prices are there. Fifteen bucks an hour is a good minimum wage. But even if you're making 65% more, you're still going to be busting your hump:
"While rents have certainly backed off their summer 2022 highs, the current median asking rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan remains close to $4,000, which, even at $25 per hour, would still require a month of full-time, 40-hour work weeks to pay the rent," John Walkup, co-founder of real estate data analytics firm UrbanDigs, told The Post.
