Jun 11, 2026
For 25-year-old Jared Infantolino, living in Miami has always come with a trade-off. The lifestyle is vibrant, the ocean is close, and the city feels full of opportunity — but staying there on his salary has become increasingly out of reach.
“I love living down here, and I want to stay down here,” he said in an interview with NBC South Florida. “But the problem is, I can’t afford to.”
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Infantolino works long shifts as an EMT. At one point this year, he spent time working in Tallahassee, where he earned roughly $18 to $20 an hour, paid about $800 a month for a studio apartment and still had money left over at the end of the month.
Back in Miami, he says the math simply doesn’t work. “Rent for a studio is $1,200 or $1,300 a month, and we barely scratch the surface with $3,000 a month,” he said.
For Infantolino, the pressure has become so intense that he’s now enrolled in the military in part to help secure housing stability — a decision that underscores just how expensive staying in South Florida has become.
Young adults priced out of staying
Infantolino’s experience is increasingly common among young adults in Miami-Dade County, where the gap between wages and housing costs has become one of the largest affordability challenges in the country.
Miami-Dade has more than 177,000 residents between the ages of 20 and 29, according to Beacon Council demographics data. But staying in the county is becoming harder for many in that age group.
That’s because a large share of local jobs are concentrated in lower-paying industries. Roughly 60% of employment in Miami-Dade is in leisure and hospitality, health care and retail — sectors that typically do not keep pace with the region’s rapidly rising housing costs, FIU Metropolitan Center Associate Director Edward Murray[a] told the Miami Herald. “Those occupations in our core industries do not provide enough for anybody to be able to afford the current rent and home prices.”
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That mismatch is showing up in both sentiment and migration patterns. An Axios survey of Miami residents ages 18 to 34 found that more than 51% believe they will likely leave the area in the future.
At the same time, Miami has been ranked among the top U.S. metros for young people leaving, reflecting what many residents already feel on the ground — that even full-time work does not guarantee independence.
For Infantolino, the numbers are personal. While earning around $3,000 a month, he says basic rent for a studio apartment alone can consume nearly half his income — before transportation, food, or savings are even considered.
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When staying no longer adds up
For Infantolino, the problem isn’t a lack of work. It’s that the paycheck doesn’t seem to go as far as it should.
He’s far from alone, as across the country, many young adults are delaying moves that previous generations often took for granted — whether that’s renting a place on their own, buying a starter home, or building up meaningful savings. A lot of that just comes down to how expensive basic living has become compared to what many entry- and mid-level jobs pay.
According to Pew Research Center, as of 2023, about 18% of Americans ages 25 to 34 lived with their parents. Meanwhile, that same year, more than a third of renters nationwide reported spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to a 2025 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
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In Miami, that shows up in a very practical way as young workers start planning their lives in shorter stretches. Not “where do I build my future,” but “how long can I realistically stay here before I need to make a change.”
Some people choose to stay and try to make it work. Others start looking at places where their paycheck can stretch further. Even if a job pays less, lower rent and everyday costs can leave them with more money at the end of the month. And for a lot of people, that extra breathing room ends up mattering more than the size of the paycheck on paper.
That’s the calculation Infantolino found himself making. “I need to get out of here and find somewhere I can afford to live,” he said.
And for a growing number of young residents, that’s becoming a difficult reality to ignore.
[a]His quote is about halfway through the article
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Laura Grande is a freelance contributor with nearly 15 years of industry experience. Throughout her career she's written about and edited a range of topics, from personal finance and politics to health and pop culture.
