Retail workers, the most common job in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, don’t earn enough to afford a studio apartment, let alone buy a house, according to recent data from UNLV researchers.
They aren’t the only workers in Nevada priced out and struggling with housing affordability.
A fact sheet published this week by Brookings Mountain West and the Lincy Institute at UNLV shows the overwhelming majority of people employed in the top occupations in the state can’t afford their rent.
The findings, which uses information from the National Housing Conference’s Paycheck to Paycheck database and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, identified the ten most common professions in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which totalled 24.7% of the area’s 918,670 workers, and in the Reno-Sparks area, where the ten most common occupations totaled 23.9% of 225,650 workers.
In Southern Nevada, “7 of the 10 most common occupations do not earn the income needed to afford rent for a studio apartment” while in Reno “6 of the 10 most common occupations do not earn the income needed to afford rent for a studio apartment,” according to the report.
“That’s not household income. It’s an individual,” said William Brown, the director of Brookings Mountain West, in an interview. “If you have two incomes in a household, you have more resources, but you may also have children and other expenses.”
UNLV …
