Can National Living Wage Workers Make Their Home in The Birmingham Area Anymore?

It turns out London isn't the only city silently ousting national living wage workers

As rent prices continue to rise faster than inflation, Birmingham and its surrounding towns have become the latest area in which workers making national living wage might be hard-pressed to find affordable housing.

We've mapped out how much someone looking to rent a one-bed in and around Birmingham would have to make per hour.

Affordable postcodes are in white. Postcodes with insufficient data have been left blank.

While rent prices in Birmingham might not be quite as outrageous as London, only nine postcode areas (out of 77) offer one-bed rentals that workers on national living wage working a 37.5 hour week would be able to afford without spending more than 35% of their pay on rent. Why 35%? This is the percentage of a person’s income that housing and homelessness charity Shelter say should be spent on rent for the housing to be considered 'affordable'.

The current national living wage in the UK is £6.70 per hour for workers aged 21 and over, however on 1 April 2016 this was raised to £7.20 for workers aged 25 and over.

The Living Wage Foundation has proposed a national living wage of £8.25 per hour (£9.40 in London), however if this were applied throughout Birmingham and the surrounding towns 25 postcode areas would contain affordable one-bedroom flats.

Birmingham is the UK's second-largest city and a major hub for business and culture which may account for the rising rent prices in and around the city.

National living wage workers living in Birmingham and the surrounding towns might be happy they don't live in London however, as recent research revealed that not a single postcode in the capital offers one-bed properties which can be affordably rented on national living wage.

Find your postcode below: