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> 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.

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..

"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.

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".

> 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).

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.

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.

I disagree. Living wage is not minimum wage.

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

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.

> 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.

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).

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.

You're confusing poverty with living.

You're confusing staying alive with living

Edit: Deleted for dumb math

"Living wage" means the ability to live, not scrape by with the bare minimum possible.

“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?

It needs to be because the US has leaned further into individualism relative to other countries. If society's golden metric of success means being able to acquire all of these luxuries or services purely through monetary means as transactional individuals, don't be too surprised when the expenses rack up.

They lived in a house or apt with a third the sqft/person that was far more likely to catch fire and didn't have AC.

If they had a car they most likely shared it. It was far less safe, didn't have AC, guzzled gas and polluted.

Never ate out and spent a third of earnings on cheap grocery store staples.

College and healthcare was much cheaper, and he got a lot less of it.

We're benefiting greatly from the increase in productivity. We just view our great-grandfather luxuries as our necessities.

Yeah I think people need to start asking the question, "Where is the money going". Its not just inexistent, its literally going somewhere other than your pocket.

It's rent seeking, the antithesis of capitalism. It's always been. Enabled by abuse of government power. And no, it's not a partisan issue.

You see this pattern across the American economy. The boomers locked in their house values by passing all the zoning regulations to artificially restrict the supply of housing. AMA artificially restricts the supply of doctors to increase their wages. Accreditation pushed ever higher costs on universities which increased costs, and the availability of loans basically cut off the brake cable. And who do you think is really benefitting from all the companies enshittifying everything and pushing up costs? The billionaires and retirees of course. And the young/working people are paying for it.

The solution for individuals is arbitrage. Remote work, get healthcare abroad, and avoid college tuitions. The fact that these things make sense at all shows how broken the markets are.

And that someone is mostly government, which is a growing and increasingly wasteful fraction of GDP. We really need to start reining in the national debt and government spending. Drain the swamp.

Urban workers in China do 3,744 hours per year; farmers do 2400 hours

Norwegian workers do 1,418 hours per year, one of the lowest in the world

I think they just do that to get to an hourly rate. It’s probably better to look at the annual income and think of that number regardless of how many hours you worked during the year.

Yeah, oil nations are different. Norway's resources are well-managed, but oil nations with outsourced defence just have different constraints.

Yes, that's what makes it a living wage instead of a poverty wage, let alone a starvation wage.

Are you factoring in fuel, repairs, maintenance, registration/taxes, and insurance? As well as depreciation?

I questioned that too, but vehicle costs are based off surveyed data. So if the average 2 adults have a car payment, insurance, fuel, and repair costs, it’s probably reflected in their data. To me, that’s different than saying “a reasonable mode of reliable transportation”

> Yet this says housing costs annually would be $12000. How?

Having roommates is extremely common.

There are also a lot of room-for-rent situations that don’t show up on the websites listing apartments. If you’re tapped into local networks of younger people there’s always someone with a room for rent or a group of friends looking for someone to take over a room in a house they’re renting together. Not helpful for someone in their 50s moving to a new city, but for young people living on a budget this is just how it works and has for a long time.

I'm guessing it uses the cost of a studio for a single person.

I never rented a 1-bedroom apartment until I was married. A studio/efficiency is fine for singles, or even a room.

It's basically out of date, since the housing market has changed so rapidly.

I was wondering this too. I assume it’s because child care costs are lower when one parent isn’t working(?)

No, it's because their model puts dollar values on the labor contributed by non-working adults w/r/t raising children. So in that case, it could be that 1adult1child is slightly higher because of the need to pay for childcare, while the food/insurance/clothing etc of the additional adult in 2adult1child is offset by the fact that the non-working adult will conduct childcare and thus that expense goes away.

There are separate columns for 2 ADULTS (1 WORKING) and 2 ADULTS (BOTH WORKING). I think you are mixing up the two.

And the non-working adult is taking care of children, so reducing childcare expenses.

1. This is not ai generated.

2. Did you look in the costs breakdown? You'll probs find your answers there.

3. I am guessing having a spare adult to take care of 3 children instead of paying for childcare is probably the difference.

Child care.

Yes, this is supposed to be the number at which you aren't going to go into (medical, auto) debt, make rent/utilities each month, and not starve. It is by no means intended to represent a life containing any luxuries.

> This calculator does not include retirement savings, emergency saving, etc. It just assumes you'll comfortably live paycheck to paycheck until you die and never save a dime. In our country, you will not be getting $60k/yr post tax from social security. So, this is a stupid calculator unless you plan to never retire or never experience job loss (max payout is $450/week for unemployment in CA), etc.

It doesn't include those things because those aren't the things that are covered by a "living wage". Living wage sounds like something good, but it's literally just enough to cover what's needed. Can you afford housing, childcare, medical care, transportation for work, etc. It's a low bar, not a good target, for a society to try to hit. It means people at that wage shouldn't be going hungry or without shelter, but they won't necessarily be thriving.

How can you need that much money to not starve?

According to Wikipedia[1] median household income in the US and Norway is only about a quarter of your 160 kUSD.

I'm pretty sure that most of the people living near me in Norway are not high earners but I don't see any signs of starvation either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

> not in starvation range is ~$160k/year

That highly depends on your definition of "need" and where you live. If you're in a city with ludicrous cost of living, like San Fransisco, then sure. But, that's also why people commute, or just choose to go somewhere cheaper. It's somewhat shocking seeing how much higher the standard of living is, with much less income, outside the big cities.

In the U.S., a family of four technically doesn't need any money "not to starve," because SNAP covers the cost of groceries if providers are unable.

https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology

Put in an area and see for yourself. In general, yes this calculator is closer to what you're describing. For example, Skamania County, a pretty rural county of Washington state with a very low population of 12,000 people, still has a "required living wage" for 1 breadwinner + 1 homemaker + 3 children of $104,292 per year: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/53059

That feels pretty close to accurate.