According to recent research, the average American now has to work 50 hours a month to afford the cost of rent alone — that's an increase of almost 67 percent since 2004.

With rent prices seeing their highest inflation in 20 years — 22.2 percent — Self.inc used data from the US Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Reserve and the Department of Labor to uncover the cities and states where people have to work the most hours to cover rent.

On the state level, Hawaiians top the list, needing to work 66.2 hours a month to meet the average rent cost. Nevada (64.8 hours), California (64.5 hours) and Florida (63.5 hours) follow closely behind.

On average, North Dakota (34 hours), West Virginia (37.8 hours) and South Dakota (38 hours) require the fewest work hours to afford the median monthly rent.

When it comes to cities, the wage-to-rent ratio is worst in the metro area of San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, where 89.8 hours of work are required per month to pay rent, on average.

In fact, there are eight metro areas where it takes more than 70 work hours to cover median monthly rent costs, and five of them are in California.

Via Self.inc.

[Image credit: Robert Forcadilla]