It's also important to remember that it includes the neighborhoods you may not be so excited to live in where rents are going to be cheaper, driving down the av

It's also important to remember that it includes the neighborhoods you may not be so excited to live in where rents are going to be cheaper, driving down the average. I live in Chicago, my "living wage" is like $85,000/yr for a single guy with no kids, but my area also has a median rent of >$2000 and I need a 2nd bedroom to use as an office. This stuff is so general as to be basically worthless beyond a comparison between areas, not as a datapoint to use when calculating the cost of living somewhere.