7 ms·

I don’t think this is very accurate. In my county the “living wage” is $26.50 for a single adult with no children. Many young people I know live on much less t

• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• andiareso 8mo ago
  I disagree. Living wage is not minimum wage.
  • FrustratedMonky 8mo ago
    That is the point isn't it. The minimum wage is far below what it takes to actually 'live', like have a place to live and a car.
  • sedatk 8mo ago
    The web site also makes that distinction: living wage, poverty wage, and minimum wage.
• NewJazz 8mo ago
  Are those people funding their retirement? Are they going to be able to take care of themselves as health issues come up? Are they receiving support from family? Edit: also the housing cost is probably factoring in a studio or maybe a 1bd for a single person. That may seem luxurious to you, but for many that is the only real option they have (roommates are hard to come by and can hurt you physically and fiscally).
  • prepend 8mo ago
    No, roommates aren’t hard to come by. As evidenced by the millions who have roommates. In my 20s everyone I knew had roommates. And it was a good life. Saying a studio or 1 bedroom is required makes this metric pretty ambiguous. Thus my point, that this isn’t what’s required to just live. But to live comfortably.
    • castlecrasher2 8mo ago
      This isn't intended to be an insult to anyone here but from the responses in this thread it genuinely seems like most here haven't actually lived poor. Cutting costs isn't inhumane, it's reality, and anyone suggesting otherwise must have had very little in the way of hardship.
• etchalon 8mo ago
  "Living wage" means the ability to live, not scrape by with the bare minimum possible.
  • bumby 8mo ago
    I feel like I’ve eat pretty well, and my household food costs are almost half what the calculator shows. Similar for vehicle costs etc. After looking at the method, I think the calculator probably has some bias towards “what society has convinced us we need”. To a certain extent that is a relative and subjective perception problem, and one exacerbated when you live in a society with a lot of consumer debt.
    • Larrikin 8mo ago
      What does eating pretty well mean to you? Maybe you don't even if you think you do? We don't know without your budget or a receipt from your typical grocery run
      • NewJazz 8mo ago
        Also some folks are just smaller than others.
        • bumby 8mo ago
          They do try to account for this in their method. Men, women, and children of different ages all have different amounts of assumed food intake
      • bumby 8mo ago
        Mostly what the typical nutritional guidance has advocated consistently over the last few decades, with maybe slightly higher protein intake. 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, fairly liberal amounts of dairy and lean protein, lesser amounts of red meat. Grains like breads/rice for additional carbohydrates. Admittedly, avoiding eating out regularly is the #1 way I keep food costs down, though.
    • 8mo ago
• SLWW 8mo ago
  I do think it's a crack up how when I check my own "living wage" i still under-perform in comparison to the chart, but in my county i'm within the top 15%. Needless to say; only old people have homes and only those who have sufficient help get a nice appt.
  • throwway120385 8mo ago
    Why should we accept that rather than our own standards? If we take your tack on this then we shouldn't try to make anything better for anyone, just live with what we've got and accept whatever lot we find ourselves in.
• jrajav 8mo ago
  > This is more like “optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.” Which of course, people would like to have but certainly isn’t required to be comfortable. This is a debatable goalpost. It seems more reasonable to me to assume that meeting basic shelter needs includes having a private room to oneself. The only reason to argue otherwise is to try to drive down the wage further, and is that at all necessary? Renting a private room was possible on nearly any wage 50 years ago, and the only reason it seems out of reach for many now is because purchasing power has been slowly stagnating for decades, while housing costs have soared in recent times. Yet this whole time, GDP continues to rise. It seems that our society can easily support much higher minimum wages (and this would likely have only a positive effect of stimulating the economy), but simply chooses not to.
  • losvedir 8mo ago
    Having a private room is not the same as living alone (having a private apartment/house). I think it's reasonable for young people to have flatmates and share an apartment, for example.
    • throwway120385 8mo ago
      Is it reasonable for two people who are dating to have to keep their shared apartment when they break up? What should happen if a roommate becomes flaky or moves out? These are all real situations that make me think that pinning "living wage" to a level where you have to have roommates is not a good goal. You're basically asking people to survive by accepting unstable living conditions and potentially taking strangers into their homes, which isn't exactly "having your needs met."
      • NewJazz 8mo ago
        Seriously. Lots of people have roommates to save money. But they often meet those people socially, and sometimes those people flake on rent or just straight up dip out on the lease. And living with strangers an even tougher ask. When did a 450 sqft studio apt become a luxury? Why should it? That's a tiny amount of space. People should be able to afford that.
• cwillu 8mo ago
  You're confusing poverty with living.
  • bobro 8mo ago
    Having a roommate and an annual transportation budget under $9000 probably isn’t the right demarcation line for poverty.
• sdellis 8mo ago
  Based on the data sources and the methodology, it looks about as accurate as you could get. They link to their methodology and technical documentation from that site. Even if some resourceful young people you know can get by on less, in general people should not have to live in abject poverty while working a full time job -- I would consider that to be a "Dying Wage".
• cm2012 8mo ago
  Edit: Deleted for dumb math
  • Jtsummers 8mo ago
    > $130k per year needed ($28.50 per hour * 40 * 52). What math are you doing to get $130k with those numbers? That wage works out to around $60k/year.
  • cowthulhu 8mo ago
    28/hr is closer to 60k/yr. 130k/yr is more like 65/hr.
  • NewJazz 8mo ago
    Your 130k number is >2x what it should be. Recalculate.
• kccqzy 8mo ago
  Ultimately in all these calculators there has to be a threshold that determines whether something is needed for “living” or not. And that varies highly by the individual. The calculator suggests $5,021 for food, but for me I’d only shop at high-end grocery like Whole Foods and buy organics whenever possible. That’s clearly not enough. On the other hand it suggests $1,792 for internet and mobile which is about double what I actually pay and I have both unlimited mobile data and unlimited home data. Then it claims medical costs of $2,890. For a fit individual with good employer-provided health insurance, that figure should be almost zero. Ultimately the amount one spends for living depends very much on one’s preferences and these calculators are approximates. I believe you when you say many young people can live for much less, but that doesn’t invalidate the calculator.
  • Jtsummers 8mo ago
    > Then it claims medical costs of $2,890. For a fit individual with good employer-provided health insurance, that figure should be almost zero. No, it won't be almost zero because they're including health insurance premiums in that figure. Few jobs in the US cover 100% of the premiums for their employees. >> The cost of health care is composed of two subcategories: (1) premiums associated with employer-sponsored health insurance plans and (2) out-of-pocket expenses for medical services, drugs, and medical supplies.
  • groundzeros2015 8mo ago
    I think “I should be able to fully express my food brand preferences” is not a reasonable standard of livable.
    • kccqzy 8mo ago
      Food choices are highly personal. It’s probably the single most variable expense item here. Who are you to decide for someone else whether their food is reasonable enough or not. And furthermore, in general Americans are among the least picky about their foods; now ask a Frenchman or a Chinese about their food culture.
      • 8mo ago
• unsupp0rted 8mo ago
  They probably are overshooting, I agree. But then again the "living wage" for a healthy person is a lot less than for a not-quite healthy person or a sick person. The average person is not-quite healthy, at best.
• overgard 8mo ago
  Hard disagree on this. $26.50 sounds like a nightmare 10 years ago, let alone now. There's a lot of places in the US where having a car is essentially mandatory (actually, most places). If you can't afford a car, that limits where you can live to mostly urban areas, which then pushes the housing cost up.. and by the way, housing costs are always going up, and no, you won't be able to invest in a home, you've been priced out by developers and speculators. Not to mention you need to be able to save money for unemployment and rainy days..
  • prepend 8mo ago
    It’s obviously not required based on the evidence of many people who live and thrive without. $9000/year is a ton more than just having a car.
    • kibwen 8mo ago
      The average total cost of car ownership in the US in 2025 was about $12,000. $9,000 is already a huge underestimate of what the average person is paying.
      • ericd 8mo ago
        That US average includes a lot of new, loaded, financed, comprehensively insured F150’s, not some reasonable minimum.
      • mothballed 8mo ago
        I lived in a blizzard ridden area using just a 250cc motorcycle, year round, including riding it on the interstate. Layer enough layers, use heated gloves, etc you can easily get by with just a ninja 250, you're not going to burn more than $3-4k a year on that no matter hard you try. You don't actually need a car unless you have a child or a tradesmen with tools or something like that, a small displacement motorcycle will still take you to 99.9% of the jobs in the lower 48.
        • overgard 8mo ago
• pyrale 8mo ago
  > This is more like “optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.” An appartment and a car aren't exactly luxury goods. Cars are often needed to work, and well, having a roof over your head is usually required for a decent living. Sure, if you fancy living in a cardboard box located next to your work, your living standards are going to be much easier to attain.
  • imperio59 8mo ago
    This is such a US centric take.
    • tartuffe78 8mo ago
      It's a Living Wage Calculator for US States!
    • NewJazz 8mo ago
      The website is US-specific, so....
    • throwway120385 8mo ago
      MIT is a school in the US.
      • cozzyd 8mo ago
        where very few (relatively) people commute by car
    • irishcoffee 8mo ago
      Dell me you didn’t click the link without… ah fuck it who cares, almost nobody around here does.
    • pyrale 8mo ago
      Because the calculator is an US-only calculator.
  • prepend 8mo ago
• gs17 8mo ago
  > For example, transportation costs are $9000/year and housing is $20000/year. These are both way more than is necessary. Even on the smaller things. "Internet & Mobile" for where I am jumped out to me. Based on the difference between 1 adult and 2 adults, it's $582 per person-year for mobile (which I guess isn't far off if you get a good new phone every 2 years, it's reasonable enough) and with that subtracted, internet is $100 per month. The methodology page says "County-level data on the cost of internet comes from research on lowest-cost monthly plans from BroadbandNow", but even that page shows much cheaper options available (including the $70 per month Google Fiber I have).
  • byronic 8mo ago
    This depends a lot on where you live. In our area, the minimum internet-only offering from Spectrum is $125 (approximately) after taxes/fees, and the only "competitor" is AT&T, which is more expensive for (at least in our area) worse / flakier service. I was surprised (at least for Birmingham/AL/Jefferson County) how accurately it pegged _most_ of the costs -- childcare here is closer to $12k/annum/child so that one was the only one I pegged as 'off' - they show 2 children as $16k and that's a ~$8k underestimate
  • cozzyd 8mo ago
    yeah, I spend $30/month on internet (the 100 Mbps Google Fiber, since I realized I didn't really need 1 Gbps at home now that I go into the office every day...)
  • prepend 8mo ago
    I think I have great access. I pay $60/month for gig internet and that’s split with 4 people. I spend $20/month for mobile and buy a new $500 phone every 3 years. I make way more than a livable wage, but spend much less than their projected costs.
  • brendoelfrendo 8mo ago
    I am but a single datapoint, but the $100/month for home internet hits quite close to home. I currently pay $130 for Spectrum's gigabit cable internet plan. Their website offers it for $70, but that's only for the first year; they have raised that price by, apparently, $20 per year I've been a customer. We do not have fiber and my only other ISP option is a DSL provider that maxes out at 40mbps for $30. So sure, I can save about 75% on my internet bill by opting for internet that is 4% of the speed that I currently pay for. And this is in a rapidly growing suburb. I think $100/month is easily the case for places like my home, where local broadband monopolies still exist mostly unchallenged.
• RobotToaster 8mo ago
  You're confusing staying alive with living
• FrustratedMonky 8mo ago
  “optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.” If you can't live alone with a car? Then what do you think you are doing?
• istillcantcode 8mo ago
  I have found if you scroll all the way to the right, you get the living wage with multiple roommates and bumming a ride to work or waiting for the bus. My area most of the full-time entry level fast food/Walmart/gas station jobs pay about a dollar less than that number.
• jltsiren 8mo ago
  "Living wage" means what a household needs for a dignified life, not just for bare subsistence. If you need roommates because you can't afford an apartment on your own, you are poor by definition. That's probably the most universal definition of poverty that has ever existed. As long as there have been houses, the baseline household has had a housing unit of their own. Households that have to share housing with others have always been characterized as unusually poor, no matter the continent and the millennium.
  • prepend 8mo ago
    Not dignified. As you can live a dignified life for much less. Thus my point. I don’t know what “livable wage” means with these numbers so it’s not very useful for discussion or planning or measurement.
  • legitster 8mo ago
    > Households that have to share housing with others have always been characterized as unusually poor, no matter the continent and the millennium. Historically speaking this is incredibly wrong. Nearly every culture evolved from some sort of shared communal longhouse to individual clan homes, to extended family homes. The idea of individual private rooms actually comes about explicitly from Manors in the late medieval ages. We really didn't see widespread individual homes until the industrial revolution. In places like the East, individual rooms were an import from the West. Even in rare places where there were individual family homes (Ancient Egypt, for one). Privacy and individuality were just not concepts. Through the 1800s, you might have literally been sharing a bed with a stranger in a hotel. There has also never, ever been a point in human history where living without some sort of roommate was common. Even in situations where you had lots of single workers, they almost always lived in bunkhouses or SROs.
    • jltsiren 8mo ago
      You are missing the point. This was about households rather than individuals and housing units instead of homes, and privacy is unrelated to the discussion. For example, longhouses typically had internal subdivisions that functioned as housing units. A household that cannot afford a baseline housing unit is unusually poor, regardless of its size. In a developed country, the baseline housing unit most households can afford is typically an apartment or a house. Households that cannot afford one are unusually poor. Someone who forms a single-person household and doesn't earn enough to rent an apartment is poor. Single-person households are often poor, especially when the person is young. Living wage estimates for such households tend to be higher relative to typical wages than for larger households, as the idea of a living wage is largely about rising above poverty.
• newsclues 8mo ago
  Is a living wage there bare minimum to live or enough to live a life? I don’t make a living wage for my region and while I can afford food and a room to rent, I can’t really live a decent life, save for the future or invest in myself, I just barely get by every paycheque to paycheque. Thanks
  • Jtsummers 8mo ago
    > Is a living wage there bare minimum to live or enough to live a life? More the former. A lot of the commenters here are missing that detail. A living wage doesn't mean you can afford all the nice things, it means you aren't starving and can cover the needs for you and your family, but maybe some, but not many, wants.
• dheera 8mo ago
  > live on much less than this. They do not actually live on less, they sacrifice their health or well-being in order to meet the constraint. I would argue the calculator grossly underestimates necessities because most of these jobs are not doable in old age, so you need to account for saving $1 for each $1 you make, to support yourself while old. You also need an emergency fund, because in the US you get billed $1000 for the most random shit at the most random time. I got billed $5000 randomly for an echodardiogram because insurance didn't pay for it despite them saying they would. At least I have $5K to spare, but considering that can happen, that needs to be considered a basic necessity.
• atmavatar 8mo ago
  Well, it is called a "living wage", not to be confused with "poverty wage" or "subsistence wage". I've always taken "living wage" to be the wage required to live in reasonable comfort. You won't be owning any yachts or eating caviar, but you should also not be living paycheck to paycheck unless you're acting irresponsibly with your money. If you're sharing a house or apartment with one or more roommates for reasons other than romance or saving up for a place of your own, to my mind, that's not a "living wage" - it's mere survival. Whether we believe minimum wage should barely let you scrape by or live more comfortably shouldn't confuse the fact that in many places, it doesn't even meet what's considered "poverty wage" (e.g., it doesn't in my local area).
• matty22 8mo ago
  I don't think it is accurate for the opposite reason. If my wife and I made what the "living wage" was for two working adults, we'd be living with her parents. It is laughably low for the cost of living in this area.