The Typical American Household Is Now Rent-Burdened, a Report Says

Moodys Analytics finds that households in the U.S. now pay 30 percent of the median income for the average rent.

For the first time in more than two decades, the typical American household is rent-burdened meaning that 30 percent of the median U.S. income is required to pay the average rent, according to a new report from Moodys Analytics.

This 30 percent is a symbolic threshold, a milestone, said Thomas LaSalvia, the director of economic research at Moodys.

Reaching that threshold puts the typical American household one that earns the median income and pays the average rent where it has never been before, Mr. LaSalvia said. Moodys first started tracking this metric in 1999, when the typical rent-to-income ratio was 22.5 percent.

The rent-to-income figure was calculated by comparing the national median household income, $71,721, with the average rent, $1,794, for 2022. The current figure increased from 28.5 percent in 2021. In 2019, before the pandemic, a household with the median income would be spending 27.2 percent of its income on the average rent. This figure dipped to 25.7 percent in 2020, for pandemic-related reasons.