Full-time workers need to earn $27.83 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has been $7.25 per hour since 2009. This means a minimum-wage worker would need to work 127 hours per week to afford a 1-bedroom apartment at FMR. The Out of Reach 2025 report shows that despite rising wages, cooling inflation, and low unemployment, low-wage workers and other renters across the country continue to struggle with the high cost of rent. See more Pennsylvania data here. 

Explore the full Out of Reach 2025: The High Cost of Housing report and its interactive website with its easy-to-use search function for Out of Reach data by metropolitan-area ZIP codes. Share this information widely to make the case for long-term federal investments in affordable housing that ensures low-wage workers in Pennsylvania have a safe, decent, and affordable place to call home.

In 2025, the national Housing Wage is $33.63 per hour for a modest two-bedroom rental home and $28.17 for a modest one-bedroom. This year’s report demonstrates that the wages needed to rent a modest home far exceed not just the federal minimum wage but also the median wages of workers in many of the most common occupations, such as home health aides, food service workers, and administrative assistants. Almost half of all U.S. workers earn less than the hourly wage required to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home. Without long-term federal investment in proven solutions, safe, stable, and affordable housing will remain out of reach for millions of renters.
For additional information about Out of Reach 2025 and to look up the hourly wage required to afford a modest apartment in your state, visit: https://nlihc.org/oor

For more than 35 years, NLIHC’s Out of Reach report has called attention to the disparity between wages and the cost of rental housing in the U.S. Every year the report has shown that affordable rental homes are out of reach for millions of low-wage workers, seniors, families, and other renters. The report’s central statistic, the Housing Wage, is an estimate of the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a modest rental home at HUD’s fair market rent (FMR) without spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs – the accepted standard of affordability. The FMR is an estimate of what a family moving today can expect to pay for a modestly priced rental home in a given area.