WHAT IS THE LIVING WAGE CALCULATOR?
Families and individuals working in low-wage jobs make insufficient income to meet minimum standards given the local cost of living. We developed a living wage calculator to estimate the cost of living in your community or region based on typical expenses. The tool helps individuals, communities, and employers determine a local wage rate that allows residents to meet minimum standards of living.

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Carolyn Hohl and Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier 11/16/2022

The monthly child poverty rate skyrocketed from 12.1 percent in December 2021 to 17 percent in January 2022. (Columbia University Poverty Center, 2022). The cause of this was the end of many pandemic-era policies, including the Child Tax Credit (C...

New Data 2022 Now Posted

Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier 05/20/2022

The 2022 date update of the Living Wage Calculator is now online.

In all previous years, we posted data in the first quarter. This year we reprogrammed the tool to make it more efficient. This took longer than expected; reprogrammings inevitab...

A Calculation of the Living Wage

Dr. Stephanie Moser and assistance from Chet Swalina 05/19/2022

Checked for accuracy on 5/6/2022; Numerical values are consistent with living wage 2021 estimates published on 5/12/22

While the minimum wage sets an earnings threshold under which our society is unwilling to let families slip, it fails to ap...

Living Wage calculator

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