If you're working a full-time job, earning minimum wage and trying to find a two-bedroom apartment to rent in New Jersey, think again.
It is nearly impossible, according to an annual report released this week by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The study found that there is nowhere within the U.S. that people working a full-time minimum-wage job can afford a two-bedroom apartment, including in states with particularly low rents such as Arkansas.
The hunt for the two-bedroom rental in New Jersey is one of the most difficult in the nation, the report shows.
"New Jersey is generally considered an affluent state," said James Hughes, a faculty fellow at Rutgers University's John H. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. "But then you have to factor in housing costs. We're not nearly as rich as the income measure suggests."
The average cost of rent in New Jersey is $1,465 -- the seventh most expensive in the nation -- and residents would need to earn $28.17 an hour to afford it. The current minimum wage is $8.60 an hour.
The average cost of a two-bedroom rental in the U.S. is $1,149, and the salary needed to afford that apartment is about $45,960 a year, according to the report.
In New Jersey, about 1.5 percent of the population earns minimum wage. Those 135,000 people would need to work more than three full-time minimum-wage jobs to be able to afford a two-bedroom rental apartment, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Bureau and Labor Statistics.
Many people in New Jersey are making more than minimum wage, or are working part-time jobs, and still cannot afford a two-bedroom rental, said Brandon McKoy, director of government and public affairs at New Jersey Policy Perspective, a left-leaning think tank.
"The clearest indication that there is a wage issue in New Jersey is that unemployment levels are back to where they were before the recession, but poverty is much higher," McKoy said. "What does that tell you?"
If wages had kept up with production and inflation, minimum wage would be over $20 an hour by now, McKoy said.
When he entered office in January, Gov. Phil Murphy said he was committed to raising the minimum wage to $15 in New Jersey -- one of his main campaign promises. So far, the legislation has not moved forward, but McKoy said if it were to pass, it would affect over 1 million people in the state.
"It's going to help people on benefits. It's going to help local businesses in New Jersey," McKoy said. "At the end of the day, customers create jobs. And we have a lot of people who want to be customers, and they just can't be and they aren't paid a proper wage."
The proposal, though, doesn't fix the high cost of housing in New Jersey, Hughes said. The cost of land and high taxes make renting and owning a house or apartment difficult for hundreds of thousands of people in the Garden State, he said.
The good news?
The New Jersey economy is doing better than it has done in a long time, Hughes said. The state is in its 107th month of expansion -- the second largest expansion in American history, according to Hughes -- and there's a good chance it will continue until the summer of 2019.
And the bad news?
"You don't know you're in a bubble until it bursts," he said. "Once we get in 2019, we are in uncharted territory."
Erin Banco may be reached at ebanco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ErinBanco. Find NJ.com on Facebook.