I would say that one of the major weaknesses of this, like many living wage calculators, is the lack of any retirement or other savings. Unless one has absolute faith that social security and...
I would say that one of the major weaknesses of this, like many living wage calculators, is the lack of any retirement or other savings. Unless one has absolute faith that social security and other retirement programs will actually cover the entirety of your life in retirement and that you'll have no surprise expenses, their "living wage" is still quite a bit below where it would need to be. The individual costs are more or less in alignment with the basic cost to live, but it's not enough.
One should also note that while they show the "living wage" breakdown, many of those costs don't actually drop much just because you have less money. Looking at Alameda County, CA, the hourly pay for a living wage is $30/hour, and the poverty wage is $7.52/hour, which is 25%. But the "living wage" cost for housing for a single adult is pegged at $24k/year, and that's about as low as you can go. If you're sharing a room with someone you might be able to pay $12/k a year, but there are pretty much no $6k/year housing options.
A lot of the "middle class" is barely scraping along at the "living wage" line, and it's not really possible to quarter those costs and live. That means the poverty wage is actually just death, forced emigration, or spending your life hotbunking in a shared room and scrounging for every penny. These numbers just reinforce why we see so many homeless encampments: no one but finance, medical, management, and computer people make much above a "living wage" that assumes you'll earn until you die.
EDIT: They do call this out in the FAQ:
Do the living wage estimates include a reasonable amount of savings and leisure expenditures or go beyond a subsistence wage?
No, the living wage model currently does not factor in savings, leisure expenditures, emergency expenses, or other cost categories beyond basic needs.
Not much of a "living" wage, then. Calling it something more than a subsistence wage is gilding a turd, and presenting wages below that line is just creating a false sense that their top option isn't actually the bottom of the barrel.
Comment box Scope: comment, opinion, rant Tone: disgruntled (not at you personally, just society) Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I think the benefit of this tool is to demonstrate how far below...
Comment box
Scope: comment, opinion, rant
Tone: disgruntled (not at you personally, just society)
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
I think the benefit of this tool is to demonstrate how far below adequate the legal minimum wage is. The bar is low and we still fail to reach it. In my city it's still $7.25 because the state prohibits higher local minimum wages. This tool says it should be $23.26 where I live, more than triple the current. I think laying it all out like this is helpful - it's not making the argument that wages shouldn't be even higher, just showing that WOW we are REALLY far behind.
I agree with you though, the "living wage" here is really just the "scrape by" wage. Which I guess is more or less accurate. But still sad. I'm not sure of a term for a better tier - the "comfort wage" sounds too luxurious.
I remember when we were talking about the $15 minimum wage, and Congress did nothing to raise it. It seems Sisyphean because of inflation - why can't we at least get legislation to attach the wage to inflation? Then we can talk about raising the baseline.....
or spending your life hotbunking in a shared room and scrounging for every penny
This feels like a Western and especially an American problem, or maybe just a problem with liberal interpretations of capitalism. In places with functioning social systems --- I don't mean the government --- family units are expected to care for the elderly, whether that's immediate or extended family, just like how parents are expected to care for children. And for people who have no family, neighbors are expected to help. That's not enforced by the government, it's not a law, it's not a social program - when people live in a real society, they help each other. Intellectuals came up with the term "mutual aid" to describe this, but the idea of social cooperation is not new and is not originally academic.
Modern society is so individualistic and prideful that people (even those with immense houses) consider it undignified for elderly relatives to live with them. People are socialized to say things like, "Oh, I love my mother, but I could NEVER live with her." Most of the time this means they are mildly annoyed by their mother or reminded of their childhood in mildly annoying ways - so it's not even considered an option, and everyone's poor parents needs to spend a LOT of money living BY THEMSELVES in their own house (expensive/inefficient) or share a room with strangers and scrounge instead of being taken in by relatives. (FYI I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ABUSIVE PARENTS, I KNOW THERE ARE REASONS NOT TO DO THIS FOR EVERYONE) It's just accepted in America that the only people who have households with multiple generations are immigrants and poor people. This is really inefficient. This also means that young parents have to pay thousands of dollars in childcare because they have no elderly relatives nearby to watch the kids while they work!!! Really it doesn't need to be a blood relative, that's just the most automatic arrangement. We could totally live more efficiently as a society if we swallowed our pride a little.
Obviously it's extra hard and unpleasant and if you're already living in a tiny space, it isn't necessarily appealing to bring in another person into your household. But the reason housing is expensive is because there is way too much demand and not enough supply. People living alone, including old people, severely restricts housing availability. This was made more obvious by the pandemic and because young people in recent years are also increasingly living alone. If the amount of housing doesn't change but everyone wants their own apartment until age 35, then obviously rents are going to get really high. And we have all these artificial requirements in our heads about, well, each person needs their own room, or a certain amount of space, because we spend such an excessive amount of time indoors. So people buy and build bigger houses, which means there is less available space for units per square mile, which further restricts supply. People have good reasons to make their own decisions, but we have to be honest -- our collective decisions are part of what drives up the cost. It's really easy to blame everything on billionaires (and it's not like that's wrong) but if that's all we blame, then we forget we are also partially responsible.
The biggest absolutely essential expense this website lists is housing. Childcare is second, but that decreases a lot in intergenerational households - partially if elders are working part-time, or potentially to zero. Transportation is directly linked to housing availability (Transit-Oriented Development reduces COL); transport costs are high in places where car ownership is required. This is because everyone paying to operate their own car is space/energy-inefficient and therefore cost-inefficient. If we just built more housing in places near transport, then tons of affordability problems would go away. (And if we accept that we should be less antisocial and return to slightly larger family or social units, we could reduce costs even more.)
I post on here all the time about NIMBYs keeping local zoning laws restrictive to prevent more housing from being built. I think people intellectually recognize the problem. But the NIMBYism is extremely strong and people don't always stick to their intellectual beliefs when it affects them personally.
Nearly everyone with even modest income/wealth (even people who would go on websites like Tildes) says 'oh no we should fix the COL and build more housig!' However, whenever THEIR neighborhood is going to get a new apartment complex, they vote against it because: 'it'll cause traffic' 'parking will be terrible' 'it's too big of a building for this small town' 'it's ugly architecture' 'the construction will be terrible' 'it'll bring the wrong people in' 'just build it somewhere else'. Really??? So plans are canceled, downsized, or moved to areas with no access to transportation/amenities - not because that's a better place, but because there's less resistance. And if the housing DOES get built, people complain in dismissive tones about how much worse XYZ has gotten 'since they put those new condos up'. It genuinely drives me insane.
Poorer people are sensitive to the idea of gentrification (understandably -- it's a personal impact). On average they are also less educated, and not reading scientific research papers about economics. But it is true that all housing construction increases supply (by definition), and where supply increases, demand decreases - in a free market that means prices always decrease. It's just that a local housing market is larger than 1 neighborhood, so if ONLY a few neighborhoods are building new housing, hyper-local/block-by-block price changes are always going to be lopsided (even while the average price in the city decreases). So even if the new apartments are branded as 'luxury' and are themselves unaffordable, there is still MORE housing in the local housing market in total, which reduces all prices, because people who would otherwise be competing with you for Class B or C apartments can now rent Class A apartments. This isn't just my opinion, it's backed up by research. Even in the case that a development craze causes people to move into a city they didn't live in previously, that means they are moving AWAY from somewhere else and decreasing demand in that other place. This is why the most effective zoning strategy is to pass statewide upzoning laws, especially transit-oriented development, and prevent local municipalities from downzoning everything to inefficient SFH. Some legislation in California has been successful in this, but it's still tepid.
NIMBYs in the first category - the ones who pay attention to politics and go to zoning meetings - make all the specious arguments they can to politicians to stop development on conservative grounds. If that doesn't work they make up some BS about negative environmental impacts (which they obviously don't believe). If that doesn't work, they go out of their way to spread narratives about how adding new housing will raise the COL - which, like much misinformation, has a core of accuracy but is mostly wrong and greatly exaggerated. So equity-minded progressives get wrapped up in these anti-development beliefs that do not correspond to economic reality, and so the NIMBY voting bloc dominates elections and becomes socially unacceptable to argue against.
COL is more complicated than all that but the foundational concept of supply and demand is highly influential.
Anyway that's all to say that there are solutions to this problem beyond just raising the minimum wage. I'd like that to happen, but for real social change to occur we need to do many things at the same time. So, if you ever find yourself in a local zoning meeting, I recommend you give up on your aesthetic preferences and just agree to build more housing. It's for the greater good.
I think that other side of the coin is that often, elderly parents don't want to live with their kids. I don't really blame them, I probably wouldn't want to either. I know if I floated the idea...
Most of the time this means they are mildly annoyed by their mother or reminded of their childhood in mildly annoying ways - so it's not even considered an option, and everyone's poor parents needs to spend a LOT of money living BY THEMSELVES in their own house (expensive/inefficient) or share a room with strangers and scrounge instead of being taken in by relatives
I think that other side of the coin is that often, elderly parents don't want to live with their kids. I don't really blame them, I probably wouldn't want to either. I know if I floated the idea to my parents in their 80s that they move in with me, it would be instantly shot down. They value their privacy and independence just like anyone else. If it comes to the point where they physically can't take care of themselves it might be a different conversation, but once they got to that point, they wouldn't be much use in childcare, and they'd probably need a facility with medical staff rather than just a place to live.
It's a cultural thing in the US, but it's not just because kids don't want their parents to live with them. Parents don't want to live with their kids either. I think a lot of that culture is shaped by the fact that economically, the US is one of the few places in the world over the past 100 years where every nuclear family having their own housing was even viable. Most of the world hasn't historically been in a financial position where that was even a possibility.
Absolutely. I'm super pleased to support more housing. Some of the state level bills passed recently could mean my (rent controlled) building might be demolished because of where it's located, and...
Absolutely. I'm super pleased to support more housing. Some of the state level bills passed recently could mean my (rent controlled) building might be demolished because of where it's located, and I still support more housing. (Though the fact that there was an amendment that rent controlled tenants who lose their units so that new, larger buildings can be built will get equivalent new units and carry on their renting situation makes it much easier to support it without worrying about any personal downsides.)
I am, of course, sad about gentrification, but having been in the same neighborhood through three waves of it at this point I can't help but feel that handwringing about it is kind of pointless. People come and people go, and the community networks they use to connect to each other come and go too, and new structures grow with new people. Trying to keep the community of a neighborhood the same is just as useless and destructive as trying to keep the housing stock the same. Everything will change with time, and the best we can do is try to build it up in a way that will actually support the people yet to come.
The UK government rebranded minimum wage* to "National Living Wage" a few years ago, and doctor's notes for if you're off sick for more than a week (universally and forever known as sick notes) as...
The UK government rebranded minimum wage* to "National Living Wage" a few years ago, and doctor's notes for if you're off sick for more than a week (universally and forever known as sick notes) as "fit notes", both of which feel very newspeak-coded to me. Admittedly the minimum wage is one of the places that the UK isn't doing too badly in international terms, at least for people who live outside London, but the name change still just feels gross and misleading.
*Yes there are a couple of caveats that mean it's not technically the minimum, because you can pay less to apprentices in recognised training schemes, and to people under 21 in general - it's still minimum wage in practice, and that second exception is an extremely shitty one anyway
The site displays wage numbers in hourly format but displays average salaries in yearly formats without any hourly calculation for ease of comparison. This is a fairly big oversight, imo.
The site displays wage numbers in hourly format but displays average salaries in yearly formats without any hourly calculation for ease of comparison. This is a fairly big oversight, imo.
Agreed. For quick reference, $100,000 is $48 at 40 hours a week. In my former home county, that means only managers and lawyers have a living wage. No more MBA and lawyers as politicians.
Agreed. For quick reference, $100,000 is $48 at 40 hours a week.
In my former home county, that means only managers and lawyers have a living wage.
Explanations are found in the FAQ and Methodology pages. The latter having the calculation you're looking for:
Explanations are found in the FAQ and Methodology pages. The latter having the calculation you're looking for:
Generating an hourly living wage
To transform value generated in Step 3 into an hourly wage rate, we divide the worker's earnings by 2,080 hours, which assumes that the one working adult is employed full-time at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year. This hourly wage – or the living wage – is the minimum a full-time worker must earn to support the costs of their family's basic needs and taxes in the county in which they live.
I think it's low for Vegas, which is tricky given that where you live can change your CoL WILDLY. That said rent is pretty bad at this point and I think the housing price is low. It gets a little...
I think it's low for Vegas, which is tricky given that where you live can change your CoL WILDLY. That said rent is pretty bad at this point and I think the housing price is low.
It gets a little awkward because people have a different mental image of what "living wage" is.
The definition given is-
"The living wage shown is the hourly rate that an individual in a household must earn to support themselves and/or their family, working full-time, or 2080 hours per year. "
but like...if you're making what they recommend in Vegas with kids, you're not exactly living on easy street. I agree you're not poverty, but it's not "own a smallish house in a decent area, and don't worry about the bills while making your donations for retirement".
Much more "renting a place in a mediocre area one paycheck away from major upheaval never making IRA contributions" or whatever. In general I find these calculations seem to leave out the "actually start your retirement fund" calculations or "save for children college" stuff, but perhaps some of that is in here and I don't have time to check.
annnnd glancing below my edit window I see MimicSquid has pointed out the same thing, so yeah.
Their definition feels fair. Everyone will have different personal goals. A fairly objective baseline is the amount that’s required to rent a place that will not be a detriment to your health and...
Their definition feels fair. Everyone will have different personal goals. A fairly objective baseline is the amount that’s required to rent a place that will not be a detriment to your health and safety + food + bills. Everyone else, people can tack on on their own based on their own goals for life.
I think they're close for my area, I'm paid around their listed living wage for 1 adult no partner and feel like it'd be tight but doable on my own. I do live with my partner though. The amount...
I think they're close for my area, I'm paid around their listed living wage for 1 adult no partner and feel like it'd be tight but doable on my own. I do live with my partner though.
The amount they list for housing is possible but only if you're renting, though the market is small for rent in that range. It would be rather difficult to secure a lease on that income. Most companies require income equal to triple the rent, you couldn't secure a lease at their housing cost for the listed living wage. Not to mention first month rent, last month rent, and a security deposit -- this budget leaves little room to accumulate that much in savings. So you probably need a roommate. Which many folks well into their 30s have here.
I wouldn't allot my money as they do, mostly due to differences in the implied lifestyle. I think I'd be able to squeeze in some savings, but probably not retirement savings.
Otherwise, seems to ultimately depend on how much of that "other" you can save and how often shit happens.
Edit: seems worth noting their living wage is right around median wage for the area.
Housing is very optimistic (there are <10 units currently available that are in budget on zillow). Medical assumes you have employer sponsored coverage which seems iffy. I don't want to fact check...
Housing is very optimistic (there are <10 units currently available that are in budget on zillow). Medical assumes you have employer sponsored coverage which seems iffy. I don't want to fact check too much here, but it seems quite optimistic to me. I suspect the "true" number is at least 20% higher than what was given for many if not all given categories.
For Central Minnesota, I think that this tool is unrealistic. My area is known for it's low cost of living, and I think that this tool doesn't quite reflect that. At bare minimum, the wage...
do you think their numbers for expenses are realistic for where you live?
For Central Minnesota, I think that this tool is unrealistic. My area is known for it's low cost of living, and I think that this tool doesn't quite reflect that.
At bare minimum, the wage calculations really aren't useful at all. The city minimum wage in Minneapolis and St. Paul is both ~16 USD /hour, well above the federal and state minimum wage. Since its sorted by county, technically these wouldn't apply to areas outside of city limits, but there is a significant spillover effect.
Additionally, housing and transport costs seem inflated. I think that there's a big difference between the luxury and non-luxury housing here, and it skews the mean pretty hard. For transportation, it really depends on if someone has a car payment. Since the metro has fairly reliable public transit, someone's transportation costs could be as low as 1k yearly for an unlimited transit pass.
Don't get me wrong, there's absolutely an affordability crisis, but in my experience, it's due to lack of opportunity and underemployment. There's definitely been an increased cost of living in my region, but the real issue is that wages haven't kept up, and jobs are hard to find. Maybe I'm just more privileged than most, and my experience is one of a DINK, so take my perspective with a grain of salt.
I didn’t think Ramsey County looked unreasonable, on average. There is reliable public transit but I wouldn’t say it’s the most expansive system. If all you need to do is hop on the blue line or...
I didn’t think Ramsey County looked unreasonable, on average.
There is reliable public transit but I wouldn’t say it’s the most expansive system. If all you need to do is hop on the blue line or green line and walk a few blocks, it’s not too bad.
But if you need to commute to or from one of the burbs daily, like all the HQs and industry along 494 or 694, it’s not too good.
More or less. To piggyback on Eji's comment, cost of living can vary in LA County/LA metro area (which includes Anaheim for some reason?), but overall nothing really pops out at me. I made just...
More or less. To piggyback on Eji's comment, cost of living can vary in LA County/LA metro area (which includes Anaheim for some reason?), but overall nothing really pops out at me. I made just under their definition of a living wage in my area and I always felt like I would have struggled if I hadn't lived with my partner. I feel for my former colleague, who lived with her teenage daughter, granddaughter, and unemployed husband, but only made about $3/hr more than I did. Poverty wage is a joke.
Note that the housing numbers are for a “household”, i.e., how many people living under one roof. The numbers appeared significantly inflated to me for the single person with no children, until I...
Note that the housing numbers are for a “household”, i.e., how many people living under one roof. The numbers appeared significantly inflated to me for the single person with no children, until I realized that the methodology assumes that the person is living without roommates. The cost breakdown is consistent, with the housing numbers being sometimes double what I would expect (since I live with roommates).
Of course, no roommates is much more likely for a parent or couple with children, and for those examples the numbers seem more consistent with my expectations. This is a super cool project!
Hey, are you OK over there? This year over here had 251 workdays, that's 2008 work hours. Accounting for minimum of 20 days a year for vacation 231 and for minimalistic sick leave 221 (two colds a...
2080 hours per year
Hey, are you OK over there? This year over here had 251 workdays, that's 2008 work hours. Accounting for minimum of 20 days a year for vacation 231 and for minimalistic sick leave 221 (two colds a year). That's 1768 hours per year.
Now, most employers offer +5 days of vacation extra and many +5 more in sickdays. Public sector and high-paying jobs have +10 days of vacation. So that's like 1728 or even 1688 hours per year.
It seems to me the true reason you haven't revolted yet is that you have to work the hours and cannot afford to step out to overthrow the government or something..?
Anyway, consider leaving US and moving to EU. We still have publicly funded healthcare, preschools and college. Or just... I dunno, vote in some radical progressive (actually a mild centrist) instead of slavers. This is getting silly.
The 2080 is simply 5 days/week * 52 weeks * 8 hours for full-time employment. This includes holidays, sick days, and vacation leave. These paid-time-off days are included for the purposes of...
The 2080 is simply 5 days/week * 52 weeks * 8 hours for full-time employment. This includes holidays, sick days, and vacation leave. These paid-time-off days are included for the purposes of calculating an estimated hourly rate from a full-time annual salary.
This seems like a good place for a "feels like" number, the same as you get on weather forecasts. You're right that the annualised calculations check out, but they do mask pretty significant...
This seems like a good place for a "feels like" number, the same as you get on weather forecasts. You're right that the annualised calculations check out, but they do mask pretty significant differences in work culture, hours worked, and workers' rights and protections.
And @mordae, for what it's worth, the well paid in the US (tech, medicine, finance, etc.) often still end up making a lot more money than in the EU, whichever way you slice it. You can account for the extra hours, the healthcare costs, the insane rent, and the rest and still come out with a significantly higher bank balance on an absolute and on a per hour basis. As far as I'm concerned it's not enough to justify the downsides, which is one of the reasons I don't live there anymore - past a certain point, once you've got enough money for comfort and reasonable financial security either way, I think free time and dignity are worth a lot more than money - but a lot of people do make the opposite choice.
For the low paid in the US, yeah, things seem worse in pretty much every way, but those are the ones who can't easily leave, so the market apparently has no incentive to treat them like people. It's a very capitalist approach: what the market will bear in terms of wages depends on whether someone's a captive audience or whether they have the realistic choice to go elsewhere. And no, I don't really understand how the people on the losing side of this have been so successfully propagandised that they aren't rioting either.
That's because the rich people pay much less taxes here. Hint: It sucks for everybody else because the rich people don't pay enough of a fair share. Either in wages or taxes.
making a lot more money than in the EU, whichever way you slice it.
That's because the rich people pay much less taxes here.
Hint: It sucks for everybody else because the rich people don't pay enough of a fair share. Either in wages or taxes.
You’re absolutely right that they don’t, but trust me, even that doesn’t make up the gap. I could double my income without really trying, and triple it with a bit of effort, just by doing the same...
You’re absolutely right that they don’t, but trust me, even that doesn’t make up the gap. I could double my income without really trying, and triple it with a bit of effort, just by doing the same work in the US - and the UK, for all that it’s declining, isn’t exactly a poor country.
One thing that seems somewhat unrealistic is that for a young, single person, wouldn’t you often share an apartment? Or at least, that’s how we did it in San Francisco back in the dot-com era....
One thing that seems somewhat unrealistic is that for a young, single person, wouldn’t you often share an apartment? Or at least, that’s how we did it in San Francisco back in the dot-com era. You’d still have your own room of course.
The increased costs for families are pretty dramatic, and if the savings from having roommates were accounted for, the difference would be even more dramatic.
There are probably other tricks not accounted for that some people use to get by with less than the number given by the calculator.
In San Francisco, the cost of $25k/year for one person is for a single room in a shared apartment. I know people who were paying that much for a bedroom in the Mission 8 years ago, and it hasn't...
In San Francisco, the cost of $25k/year for one person is for a single room in a shared apartment. I know people who were paying that much for a bedroom in the Mission 8 years ago, and it hasn't gotten better.
I would say that one of the major weaknesses of this, like many living wage calculators, is the lack of any retirement or other savings. Unless one has absolute faith that social security and other retirement programs will actually cover the entirety of your life in retirement and that you'll have no surprise expenses, their "living wage" is still quite a bit below where it would need to be. The individual costs are more or less in alignment with the basic cost to live, but it's not enough.
One should also note that while they show the "living wage" breakdown, many of those costs don't actually drop much just because you have less money. Looking at Alameda County, CA, the hourly pay for a living wage is $30/hour, and the poverty wage is $7.52/hour, which is 25%. But the "living wage" cost for housing for a single adult is pegged at $24k/year, and that's about as low as you can go. If you're sharing a room with someone you might be able to pay $12/k a year, but there are pretty much no $6k/year housing options.
A lot of the "middle class" is barely scraping along at the "living wage" line, and it's not really possible to quarter those costs and live. That means the poverty wage is actually just death, forced emigration, or spending your life hotbunking in a shared room and scrounging for every penny. These numbers just reinforce why we see so many homeless encampments: no one but finance, medical, management, and computer people make much above a "living wage" that assumes you'll earn until you die.
EDIT: They do call this out in the FAQ:
Not much of a "living" wage, then. Calling it something more than a subsistence wage is gilding a turd, and presenting wages below that line is just creating a false sense that their top option isn't actually the bottom of the barrel.
Comment box
I think the benefit of this tool is to demonstrate how far below adequate the legal minimum wage is. The bar is low and we still fail to reach it. In my city it's still $7.25 because the state prohibits higher local minimum wages. This tool says it should be $23.26 where I live, more than triple the current. I think laying it all out like this is helpful - it's not making the argument that wages shouldn't be even higher, just showing that WOW we are REALLY far behind.
I agree with you though, the "living wage" here is really just the "scrape by" wage. Which I guess is more or less accurate. But still sad. I'm not sure of a term for a better tier - the "comfort wage" sounds too luxurious.
I remember when we were talking about the $15 minimum wage, and Congress did nothing to raise it. It seems Sisyphean because of inflation - why can't we at least get legislation to attach the wage to inflation? Then we can talk about raising the baseline.....
This feels like a Western and especially an American problem, or maybe just a problem with liberal interpretations of capitalism. In places with functioning social systems --- I don't mean the government --- family units are expected to care for the elderly, whether that's immediate or extended family, just like how parents are expected to care for children. And for people who have no family, neighbors are expected to help. That's not enforced by the government, it's not a law, it's not a social program - when people live in a real society, they help each other. Intellectuals came up with the term "mutual aid" to describe this, but the idea of social cooperation is not new and is not originally academic.
Modern society is so individualistic and prideful that people (even those with immense houses) consider it undignified for elderly relatives to live with them. People are socialized to say things like, "Oh, I love my mother, but I could NEVER live with her." Most of the time this means they are mildly annoyed by their mother or reminded of their childhood in mildly annoying ways - so it's not even considered an option, and everyone's poor parents needs to spend a LOT of money living BY THEMSELVES in their own house (expensive/inefficient) or share a room with strangers and scrounge instead of being taken in by relatives. (FYI I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ABUSIVE PARENTS, I KNOW THERE ARE REASONS NOT TO DO THIS FOR EVERYONE) It's just accepted in America that the only people who have households with multiple generations are immigrants and poor people. This is really inefficient. This also means that young parents have to pay thousands of dollars in childcare because they have no elderly relatives nearby to watch the kids while they work!!! Really it doesn't need to be a blood relative, that's just the most automatic arrangement. We could totally live more efficiently as a society if we swallowed our pride a little.
Obviously it's extra hard and unpleasant and if you're already living in a tiny space, it isn't necessarily appealing to bring in another person into your household. But the reason housing is expensive is because there is way too much demand and not enough supply. People living alone, including old people, severely restricts housing availability. This was made more obvious by the pandemic and because young people in recent years are also increasingly living alone. If the amount of housing doesn't change but everyone wants their own apartment until age 35, then obviously rents are going to get really high. And we have all these artificial requirements in our heads about, well, each person needs their own room, or a certain amount of space, because we spend such an excessive amount of time indoors. So people buy and build bigger houses, which means there is less available space for units per square mile, which further restricts supply. People have good reasons to make their own decisions, but we have to be honest -- our collective decisions are part of what drives up the cost. It's really easy to blame everything on billionaires (and it's not like that's wrong) but if that's all we blame, then we forget we are also partially responsible.
The biggest absolutely essential expense this website lists is housing. Childcare is second, but that decreases a lot in intergenerational households - partially if elders are working part-time, or potentially to zero. Transportation is directly linked to housing availability (Transit-Oriented Development reduces COL); transport costs are high in places where car ownership is required. This is because everyone paying to operate their own car is space/energy-inefficient and therefore cost-inefficient. If we just built more housing in places near transport, then tons of affordability problems would go away. (And if we accept that we should be less antisocial and return to slightly larger family or social units, we could reduce costs even more.)
I post on here all the time about NIMBYs keeping local zoning laws restrictive to prevent more housing from being built. I think people intellectually recognize the problem. But the NIMBYism is extremely strong and people don't always stick to their intellectual beliefs when it affects them personally.
Nearly everyone with even modest income/wealth (even people who would go on websites like Tildes) says 'oh no we should fix the COL and build more housig!' However, whenever THEIR neighborhood is going to get a new apartment complex, they vote against it because: 'it'll cause traffic' 'parking will be terrible' 'it's too big of a building for this small town' 'it's ugly architecture' 'the construction will be terrible' 'it'll bring the wrong people in' 'just build it somewhere else'. Really??? So plans are canceled, downsized, or moved to areas with no access to transportation/amenities - not because that's a better place, but because there's less resistance. And if the housing DOES get built, people complain in dismissive tones about how much worse XYZ has gotten 'since they put those new condos up'. It genuinely drives me insane.
Poorer people are sensitive to the idea of gentrification (understandably -- it's a personal impact). On average they are also less educated, and not reading scientific research papers about economics. But it is true that all housing construction increases supply (by definition), and where supply increases, demand decreases - in a free market that means prices always decrease. It's just that a local housing market is larger than 1 neighborhood, so if ONLY a few neighborhoods are building new housing, hyper-local/block-by-block price changes are always going to be lopsided (even while the average price in the city decreases). So even if the new apartments are branded as 'luxury' and are themselves unaffordable, there is still MORE housing in the local housing market in total, which reduces all prices, because people who would otherwise be competing with you for Class B or C apartments can now rent Class A apartments. This isn't just my opinion, it's backed up by research. Even in the case that a development craze causes people to move into a city they didn't live in previously, that means they are moving AWAY from somewhere else and decreasing demand in that other place. This is why the most effective zoning strategy is to pass statewide upzoning laws, especially transit-oriented development, and prevent local municipalities from downzoning everything to inefficient SFH. Some legislation in California has been successful in this, but it's still tepid.
NIMBYs in the first category - the ones who pay attention to politics and go to zoning meetings - make all the specious arguments they can to politicians to stop development on conservative grounds. If that doesn't work they make up some BS about negative environmental impacts (which they obviously don't believe). If that doesn't work, they go out of their way to spread narratives about how adding new housing will raise the COL - which, like much misinformation, has a core of accuracy but is mostly wrong and greatly exaggerated. So equity-minded progressives get wrapped up in these anti-development beliefs that do not correspond to economic reality, and so the NIMBY voting bloc dominates elections and becomes socially unacceptable to argue against.
COL is more complicated than all that but the foundational concept of supply and demand is highly influential.
Anyway that's all to say that there are solutions to this problem beyond just raising the minimum wage. I'd like that to happen, but for real social change to occur we need to do many things at the same time. So, if you ever find yourself in a local zoning meeting, I recommend you give up on your aesthetic preferences and just agree to build more housing. It's for the greater good.
I think that other side of the coin is that often, elderly parents don't want to live with their kids. I don't really blame them, I probably wouldn't want to either. I know if I floated the idea to my parents in their 80s that they move in with me, it would be instantly shot down. They value their privacy and independence just like anyone else. If it comes to the point where they physically can't take care of themselves it might be a different conversation, but once they got to that point, they wouldn't be much use in childcare, and they'd probably need a facility with medical staff rather than just a place to live.
It's a cultural thing in the US, but it's not just because kids don't want their parents to live with them. Parents don't want to live with their kids either. I think a lot of that culture is shaped by the fact that economically, the US is one of the few places in the world over the past 100 years where every nuclear family having their own housing was even viable. Most of the world hasn't historically been in a financial position where that was even a possibility.
Absolutely. I'm super pleased to support more housing. Some of the state level bills passed recently could mean my (rent controlled) building might be demolished because of where it's located, and I still support more housing. (Though the fact that there was an amendment that rent controlled tenants who lose their units so that new, larger buildings can be built will get equivalent new units and carry on their renting situation makes it much easier to support it without worrying about any personal downsides.)
I am, of course, sad about gentrification, but having been in the same neighborhood through three waves of it at this point I can't help but feel that handwringing about it is kind of pointless. People come and people go, and the community networks they use to connect to each other come and go too, and new structures grow with new people. Trying to keep the community of a neighborhood the same is just as useless and destructive as trying to keep the housing stock the same. Everything will change with time, and the best we can do is try to build it up in a way that will actually support the people yet to come.
The UK government rebranded minimum wage* to "National Living Wage" a few years ago, and doctor's notes for if you're off sick for more than a week (universally and forever known as sick notes) as "fit notes", both of which feel very newspeak-coded to me. Admittedly the minimum wage is one of the places that the UK isn't doing too badly in international terms, at least for people who live outside London, but the name change still just feels gross and misleading.
*Yes there are a couple of caveats that mean it's not technically the minimum, because you can pay less to apprentices in recognised training schemes, and to people under 21 in general - it's still minimum wage in practice, and that second exception is an extremely shitty one anyway
"Surviving wage" lol
The site displays wage numbers in hourly format but displays average salaries in yearly formats without any hourly calculation for ease of comparison. This is a fairly big oversight, imo.
Agreed. For quick reference, $100,000 is $48 at 40 hours a week.
In my former home county, that means only managers and lawyers have a living wage.
No more MBA and lawyers as politicians.
Explanations are found in the FAQ and Methodology pages. The latter having the calculation you're looking for:
A question for people in the US: do you think their numbers for expenses are realistic for where you live?
I think it's low for Vegas, which is tricky given that where you live can change your CoL WILDLY. That said rent is pretty bad at this point and I think the housing price is low.
It gets a little awkward because people have a different mental image of what "living wage" is.
The definition given is-
but like...if you're making what they recommend in Vegas with kids, you're not exactly living on easy street. I agree you're not poverty, but it's not "own a smallish house in a decent area, and don't worry about the bills while making your donations for retirement".
Much more "renting a place in a mediocre area one paycheck away from major upheaval never making IRA contributions" or whatever. In general I find these calculations seem to leave out the "actually start your retirement fund" calculations or "save for children college" stuff, but perhaps some of that is in here and I don't have time to check.
annnnd glancing below my edit window I see MimicSquid has pointed out the same thing, so yeah.
Their definition feels fair. Everyone will have different personal goals. A fairly objective baseline is the amount that’s required to rent a place that will not be a detriment to your health and safety + food + bills. Everyone else, people can tack on on their own based on their own goals for life.
Being one check from disaster is a detriment to your health and your bills
I think they're close for my area, I'm paid around their listed living wage for 1 adult no partner and feel like it'd be tight but doable on my own. I do live with my partner though.
The amount they list for housing is possible but only if you're renting, though the market is small for rent in that range. It would be rather difficult to secure a lease on that income. Most companies require income equal to triple the rent, you couldn't secure a lease at their housing cost for the listed living wage. Not to mention first month rent, last month rent, and a security deposit -- this budget leaves little room to accumulate that much in savings. So you probably need a roommate. Which many folks well into their 30s have here.
I wouldn't allot my money as they do, mostly due to differences in the implied lifestyle. I think I'd be able to squeeze in some savings, but probably not retirement savings.
Otherwise, seems to ultimately depend on how much of that "other" you can save and how often shit happens.
Edit: seems worth noting their living wage is right around median wage for the area.
Housing is very optimistic (there are <10 units currently available that are in budget on zillow). Medical assumes you have employer sponsored coverage which seems iffy. I don't want to fact check too much here, but it seems quite optimistic to me. I suspect the "true" number is at least 20% higher than what was given for many if not all given categories.
For Central Minnesota, I think that this tool is unrealistic. My area is known for it's low cost of living, and I think that this tool doesn't quite reflect that.
At bare minimum, the wage calculations really aren't useful at all. The city minimum wage in Minneapolis and St. Paul is both ~16 USD /hour, well above the federal and state minimum wage. Since its sorted by county, technically these wouldn't apply to areas outside of city limits, but there is a significant spillover effect.
Additionally, housing and transport costs seem inflated. I think that there's a big difference between the luxury and non-luxury housing here, and it skews the mean pretty hard. For transportation, it really depends on if someone has a car payment. Since the metro has fairly reliable public transit, someone's transportation costs could be as low as 1k yearly for an unlimited transit pass.
Don't get me wrong, there's absolutely an affordability crisis, but in my experience, it's due to lack of opportunity and underemployment. There's definitely been an increased cost of living in my region, but the real issue is that wages haven't kept up, and jobs are hard to find. Maybe I'm just more privileged than most, and my experience is one of a DINK, so take my perspective with a grain of salt.
I didn’t think Ramsey County looked unreasonable, on average.
There is reliable public transit but I wouldn’t say it’s the most expansive system. If all you need to do is hop on the blue line or green line and walk a few blocks, it’s not too bad.
But if you need to commute to or from one of the burbs daily, like all the HQs and industry along 494 or 694, it’s not too good.
More or less. To piggyback on Eji's comment, cost of living can vary in LA County/LA metro area (which includes Anaheim for some reason?), but overall nothing really pops out at me. I made just under their definition of a living wage in my area and I always felt like I would have struggled if I hadn't lived with my partner. I feel for my former colleague, who lived with her teenage daughter, granddaughter, and unemployed husband, but only made about $3/hr more than I did. Poverty wage is a joke.
Note that the housing numbers are for a “household”, i.e., how many people living under one roof. The numbers appeared significantly inflated to me for the single person with no children, until I realized that the methodology assumes that the person is living without roommates. The cost breakdown is consistent, with the housing numbers being sometimes double what I would expect (since I live with roommates).
Of course, no roommates is much more likely for a parent or couple with children, and for those examples the numbers seem more consistent with my expectations. This is a super cool project!
It turns out a lot of intolerable crap has been normalized because it's been bad for so long.
Hey, are you OK over there? This year over here had 251 workdays, that's 2008 work hours. Accounting for minimum of 20 days a year for vacation 231 and for minimalistic sick leave 221 (two colds a year). That's 1768 hours per year.
Now, most employers offer +5 days of vacation extra and many +5 more in sickdays. Public sector and high-paying jobs have +10 days of vacation. So that's like 1728 or even 1688 hours per year.
It seems to me the true reason you haven't revolted yet is that you have to work the hours and cannot afford to step out to overthrow the government or something..?
Anyway, consider leaving US and moving to EU. We still have publicly funded healthcare, preschools and college. Or just... I dunno, vote in some radical progressive (actually a mild centrist) instead of slavers. This is getting silly.
The 2080 is simply 5 days/week * 52 weeks * 8 hours for full-time employment. This includes holidays, sick days, and vacation leave. These paid-time-off days are included for the purposes of calculating an estimated hourly rate from a full-time annual salary.
This seems like a good place for a "feels like" number, the same as you get on weather forecasts. You're right that the annualised calculations check out, but they do mask pretty significant differences in work culture, hours worked, and workers' rights and protections.
And @mordae, for what it's worth, the well paid in the US (tech, medicine, finance, etc.) often still end up making a lot more money than in the EU, whichever way you slice it. You can account for the extra hours, the healthcare costs, the insane rent, and the rest and still come out with a significantly higher bank balance on an absolute and on a per hour basis. As far as I'm concerned it's not enough to justify the downsides, which is one of the reasons I don't live there anymore - past a certain point, once you've got enough money for comfort and reasonable financial security either way, I think free time and dignity are worth a lot more than money - but a lot of people do make the opposite choice.
For the low paid in the US, yeah, things seem worse in pretty much every way, but those are the ones who can't easily leave, so the market apparently has no incentive to treat them like people. It's a very capitalist approach: what the market will bear in terms of wages depends on whether someone's a captive audience or whether they have the realistic choice to go elsewhere. And no, I don't really understand how the people on the losing side of this have been so successfully propagandised that they aren't rioting either.
That's because the rich people pay much less taxes here.
Hint: It sucks for everybody else because the rich people don't pay enough of a fair share. Either in wages or taxes.
You’re absolutely right that they don’t, but trust me, even that doesn’t make up the gap. I could double my income without really trying, and triple it with a bit of effort, just by doing the same work in the US - and the UK, for all that it’s declining, isn’t exactly a poor country.
One thing that seems somewhat unrealistic is that for a young, single person, wouldn’t you often share an apartment? Or at least, that’s how we did it in San Francisco back in the dot-com era. You’d still have your own room of course.
The increased costs for families are pretty dramatic, and if the savings from having roommates were accounted for, the difference would be even more dramatic.
There are probably other tricks not accounted for that some people use to get by with less than the number given by the calculator.
In San Francisco, the cost of $25k/year for one person is for a single room in a shared apartment. I know people who were paying that much for a bedroom in the Mission 8 years ago, and it hasn't gotten better.