
How much Americans make in wages - LiweiZ
https://howmuch.net/articles/how-much-americans-make-in-wages
======
jurassic
I feel this a lot in my own family. I’m in tech at a fairly privileged BigCo.
Siblings work retail gigs for a small fraction of what I bring home. I’ve had
raises and bonuses equal to what one of my siblings makes in a year.

~~~
kough
Out of curiosity, do you subsidize your siblings? I'm going to be in the same
situation and I'm not sure what I'm going to end up doing but I think I'm
going to end up doing it.

~~~
jurassic
Yeah, moderately. This year I gave about $7k to each sibling which is life-
changing for them and not really a hardship for me other than slightly
delaying my home-ownership goal.

For one sibling, I'm the safety net when crises happen that they can't afford.
E.g. can't come up with their car insurance deductible, water heater broke,
etc. They don't ask but I always offer when it's clear that a small outlay
would spare a huge amount of stress for everyone. Because what am I going to
do, let these very minor issues send their financial life spiraling out of
control? Of course not.

Other sibling is more financially responsible and trying to work through
college part-time. I'm paying the car payment and car insurance while they go
because I am 100% on board with this self-improvement plan. I proposed this
because these expenses were keeping them from enrolling and I think it's in my
own financial interest to invest in broadening the base of financial stability
in my family.

Other context: My dad has a decent job (government job paying ~$80k/yr in
small town America) but mom is a lunatic when it comes to money so they have
nothing saved. Her idea of being able to afford something is being able to
afford the payments. So far I haven't had to bail them out but only because my
dad is too proud to ask and would rather go to his mother whenever there is a
budget crunch.

Edit to add: I see lots of people saying things along the lines of "keep money
and family separate". That is a very privileged attitude. It's very hard to
enjoy money when people you love are going through hardships that would be
solved by an infusion of cash. Obviously it's important not to give more than
you can afford but you would be surprised by the number of people in tech who
are sending money home in one way or another.

~~~
tfigment
You are a good person. Money is really good to keep separate though at least
for many people I think. I've done similar things like loaned my older brother
enough to get through nursing school as he was stocking at Target at 33 and I
thought this was a better path. I was better off then but not well off and
this cause some strains. When he was doing better it was hard to get him to
pay back anything even at 0% interest (I eventually gave up and made it a a
gift though wasn't the original intent).

I also loaned my dad basically my life savings to bail out his company which
the great recession ended bankrupting him anyway. This caused a strain with
our relationship mostly because he felt and continues to feel extremely guilty
about it even though I was able to rebuild my savings since then. Now I pay
half his rent and try to avoid tying my finances too closely to him to try and
avoid his creditors and possible future medicaid clawbacks. Money and family
can be tricky.

~~~
jacobolus
General advice: treat any “loans” to family or close friends like gifts. Once
you hand the money over, imagine it is gone forever.

Then if the loan is paid back, you will be happily surprised. But if it’s not
you won’t be bitter about it, and it won’t ruin your relationship.

Corollary: don’t lend your family members an amount of money that would cause
you hardship if it’s not paid back. (Obviously extreme circumstances call for
careful consideration of the particulars. This is not blanket advice)

YMMV.

~~~
Retra
This is great advice, I feel. I loaned my sister some money for school, and
she made an honest effort to repay me, but started falling back on it after a
while. So I just said "consider the rest of the loan a birthday present" and
asked her to not pay anymore on it.

Because at the end of the day, I'm not going to let money destroy a
relationship, and I gave her that money to relieve her stresses, not to
contribute to them. So from now on, if I give money to my family, I let them
pay it back according to their conscience and ability. People who need money
really don't need more things to worry about.

------
ausbah
>There is one important caveat to keep in mind when thinking about our
dataset. The SSA numbers include any wage earners whatsoever, even part-time
workers like students and teenagers.

not leading with this feels like poor reporting

~~~
dpark
They also use the term “earn” but the numbers they are throwing around are
entirely after-tax. That’s not even poor reporting. That’s intentionally
misleading. No one thinks that money paid to the government in the form for
tax is unearned by the individual.

~~~
Larrikin
The money that it says I make in my contract has basically been a meaningless
number to me most of my life other than a hard number I don't need to
calculate when comparing jobs. It is only now that I have a "true" job after
graduate where I make enough money to be able to set aside some money before
tax.

~~~
dpark
The money your employer pays you is what you actually earn. The fact that you
pay taxes on your _earnings_ does not reduce them. If your tax rate doubles
next year, your earnings don't go down as a result (though your take-home
will).

The IRS specifically defines earned income as what your employer pays you.

[https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-
in...](https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-
credit/earned-income)

------
skilled
I honestly wonder are people _that_ delusional that they overlook the
ridiculous debt that the country is in? Don't get me wrong, I am not from
America myself but I have a lot of friends from there, and I generally don't
hear anything good about the 'American dream'.

If you take a hard step back, like way back. And take a moment to look at the
"situation" with an outside perspective, don't you think it's a little
ridiculous that the debt keeps growing, and somehow the numbers get adjusted,
and more loans are given.

And it makes me wonder, if this is not being actively resolved now, then when?
In a 1,000 years? I have a hard time believing that society is going to
survive that long with all the idiocracy that's going on.

~~~
JDiculous
Government debt denominated in one's own currency is not really a serious
issue because governments can print their own currency to pay it off. Yes this
can result in inflation, but the inflationary effects are vastly overstated.
Most of the inflation happens at the point of spending.

I recommend reading up on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

[http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/diagrams-
dollars-...](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/diagrams-dollars-
modern-money-illustrated-part-1.html)

~~~
seibelj
MMT says that printing money has no effect if you give it to certain people.
I’ve yet to hear of a real-world example where a major economy doubles or
triples their monetary supply with no negative effect, which is what MMT will
have you believe (“don’t give it to the banks - give it to poor people in
Idaho!”).

If it sounds too good to be true then it is.

~~~
notfromhere
MMT is economics for morons

~~~
mac01021
What is the less moronic theory that I should read up on instead?

------
largehotcoffee
>48% of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median
wage

Isn't that how math works?

~~~
lotyrin
Definitely a weird thing to highlight as a "surprise" but also not quite
right, since it should be exactly half... and also that portion of the pie
should be a semicircle (around 180 degrees even if it's 48%)... but it's
significantly smaller than that somehow?

~~~
ThePadawan
It does point out that wage is still and predominantly the biggest factor in
net compensation.

This is assuming that bonuses, commissions etc. count as compensation, but not
wages.

------
ryanmarsh
This is chart junk. The issue raised in the opening paragraph is a change in
wages. Therefore it should be represented as a time-series chart (line, bar,
etc...). This is a static view. The different categories are nestled together
in a way that obscures their relationship to their neighbors. The income
groups are not categorical groups they're subranges. They should be next to
each other in a progression. This graphic is confusing and unhelpful.

This probably could have been done well with a steam graph. Maybe a slope
graph. I'd have to see the data and it depends on what they're really trying
to show.

------
pxeboot
Dual ~30k incomes is still very much middle class in most of the US.

~~~
anoncoward111
Unfortunately most of the population lives in a select few metro areas where,
due to the price of rent, greatly reduces the power of 60k in joint income,
married or not :(

~~~
mac01021
Most?

~~~
anoncoward111
I mean, do you want a specific number? Because if you go to the Wikipedia page
for "List of US Metropolitan Statistical Areas", you'll see the following

Amarillo TX population: 265,000

NY, LA, CHI, DAL, HOU, DC, MIA: 70,000,000

~~~
atburrow
21.5% is not what I would consider “most of the population”.

~~~
aaomidi
Well he's not considering in a lot of the other cities that have the same
problem. Example: Philadelphia and its suburbs.

~~~
anoncoward111
Additionally, there's only 144m people employed in the USA according to BLS,
so 70 million is half the country :)

~~~
mac01021
Except that 70 million probably contains a lot of people not in the workforce.
So it's not "apples to apples".

~~~
anoncoward111
Then assume 50-60% are working and include the addition multi-million person
metropoles I left out like BOS PHI PHX etc

~~~
bzbarsky
Assuming that 50-60% of the population of cities is working is probably too
high. As a simple example, the third table at
[https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/2016/t...](https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/2016/table01.htm)
data for New York City for 2016. Total population is 8,537,673. Population
under 18 is 1,798,888. Population over 64 is 1,155,075. That's 35% of the
population right there.

Some of them might be working, of course. For the kids, this is not likely to
be more than 10% (which would be _all_ the 16 and 17 year olds, pretty much).
For the seniors, let's guess 33% (pretty much everyone under 70). That leaves
28% of the population in the kid-or-senior age range and not-working and 7% in
the kid-or-senior age range and working.

To get to 50% overall working with those assumptions, you need 43% of the
population to be prime age and working. The prime age population is 65% of the
total. So you need 43/65 = 66% of the 18-65 age population working. But in
2017 (yes, I know, a year later; I haven't found the 2016 equivalent)
[https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/economic/labor-force-
tre...](https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/economic/labor-force-trends-
nys-2017.pdf) claims a labor force participation rate of just about 60% for
NYC (see page numbered 14 in the document, page 17 of the PDF). And that's the
rate for 25-64, which should be higher than the 18-64 rate, because as the
document notes "people between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely to be in
high school or college".

Page 15 of the document (page 18 of the PDF) does show labor force
participation rates for 16-24 and 65+ in New York State and our "33%" above
for seniors was likely a significant overestimate based on that, though it's
hard to tell: NYC labor force participation may not match the overall state
very well, obviously.

Anyway, under the (imo optimistic) assumptions above, something like 45% of
the overall population of NYC is in the labor force. Or in other words if you
ignore the 18% of the population that is children under 15, it's about 55%. So
your estimate was pretty close if you ignore the existence of kids...

Or put another way, if the prime-age labor force participation rate is 60%,
there's no way that 60% of the overall population is working. Just not
possible.

~~~
anoncoward111
I appreciate your statistics but I'm not quite sure how they are related to
our discussion.

Most of the kids in NY state are living under the care and support of their
parents and aren't working, therefore they shouldn't even be a factor in
population/labor force participation metric.

Additionally, many of the old people who aren't working shouldn't be factored
in either because they are receiving quite high pensions to live from, as well
as social security.

When you factor this in, my initial ratios still stand. Out of the 325m people
living in the USA, 45% are working (145m). When subtracting the 30% of
Americans who are retired or under the care of parents, you are removing 100m
people.

Therefore, as you say, the "prime age" labor force participation rate is 65%
(145m/225m).

Applying this ratio to my original numbers, 45.5 million people are laborers
in the Northeast. The other 25m either used to be laborers or are protected
financially by laborers.

We cannot possibly say that an area like Amarillo TX, with just 100,000
laborers, is indicative of some nationally sustainable trend where cost of
living is cheap and wages are still high.

This denies the existence of an extremely large block of humans, who are
struggling despite earning decent money.

~~~
bzbarsky
The original context, as far as I can tell, was "what fraction of workers live
in the high-cost metro areas?", right?

We're trying to estimate this in all sorts of indirect ways, when the real
questions, which I am sure we should be able to find answers for, are:

1) How many workers are there total?

2) How many workers are there in high-cost metro areas?

What we can't easily do is derive the answer for #2 from the total population
of said metro areas; it's heavily dependent on the age structure of said metro
areas and the specific workforce participation rates for those areas by age.

> Therefore, as you say, the "prime age" labor force participation rate is 65%

On average across the US, plausible.

> Applying this ratio to my original numbers, 45.5 million people are laborers
> in the Northeast

Yes, but even in the northeast not everything is in an expensive metro area,
fwiw.

> We cannot possibly say that an area like Amarillo TX, with just 100,000
> laborers, is indicative of some nationally sustainable trend

On its own, sure. But there are a lot more areas like that (by count; how the
population totals look is not obvious to me) than there are big expensive
metro areas.

That is, you might be right in your original claim that "half the country" are
in the high-cost situation, but your data is not showing that very
conclusively.

That said, I would be shocked if less than 1/4 of the country is in that
situation. And yes, we should be aware that these tens of millions of people
exist and of their situation.

~~~
anoncoward111
Thank you so much for your well-reasoned response :) I think we've found
middle-ground in trying to estimate these numbers too.

It sounds like we could ball-park the number at 33% of Americans being in high
cost of living areas.

Additionally, it sounds like we agree that that percentage might change based
on if you're looking at urban, suburban, or rural areas, and if you are
factoring in dependents or retirees.

I think the question we ask from here is, "how do we increase the number of
people who are able to have a large chunk of discretionary income coming in?"

For this the answer is probably political, contentious, and complex. Not
everyone can be a programmer, as there's only 4 million computer professionals
in the US right now. Not everyone can be a licensed employee either, who tend
to make more money (health care, law), because labor supply is strictly
regulated for these professions.

I think if we were to somehow reduce rent-seeking behavior in the economy
(real estate and health insurance prices are pretty good indicators of state-
enforced supply restrictions), then prices and salaries would begin to
approach the mean again, which is around 50k per person.

I guess what I'm saying here is I think the roofer who makes 37k a year in
Newark NJ is being underpaid, and the physician's assistant who makes 100k a
year in Scottsdale AZ is being overpaid. I would wager their labor is of equal
value, but is being artificially disrupted.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Would be interested to know the composition of retirees subsisting on social
security checks. Also, I believe this is individual income, rather than
household. Wondering how much different the picture would be on a household
income basis.

------
bobthepanda
Perhaps nitpicky, but it bothers me that their data representation is a
psuedo-pie chart that isn’t even centered.

~~~
fernmyth
Not nitpicky at all. It's a pointless, obfuscating blob of unhelpful colors
violating basic principles of data visualization:

\- Sequential income brackets are not adjacent. The wage of each blob can only
be understood by reading every number

\- Irregular shapes make it impossible to gauge size by eye

\- White text on green and pink backgrounds does not score well on WCAG. At
least they had the decency to make the text bold.

~~~
pjtr
I even think it's intentionally obfuscated. The obfuscation misleadingly
suggests the arbitrarily chosen thresholds 30k and 50k are somehow meaningful.
This encourages group-association-based / class-divide-based outrage-sharing,
reinforcing the infighting between lower middle class and upper middle class.

~~~
ForHackernews
Lumping together $50k-$50M as though that's a meaningful interval is
especially misleading.

------
zswinton
I used to work om many of those undertable gigs in order to get something to
eat in the evening. Later I figured out more about taxable gigs and 1099-MISC
here: [https://1099-misc-form.pdffiller.com/](https://1099-misc-
form.pdffiller.com/) (actually a copypaste from the IRS website) and was
puzzled about how some young people actually supposed to live a decent life
and pay that amount of their wages to a government as well

------
jungletime
Anyone know the software package used to create this graph? Was it photoshop
:)

------
notacoward
What a weird way to visualize this data. A simple histogram or CDF plot would
have shown the patterns quite well. This way it's hard to follow the bands and
blobs, which seem to be based on completely arbitrary cutoffs. It doesn't even
seem to follow its own strange logic, jumping suddenly from just under $100K
(1% per blob) to over $100K (8%) in a different part of the diagram. Why would
anyone do this?

~~~
pockettanyas
I totally agree, it's not a very clear way to show the data.

------
fromthestart
>There is one important caveat to keep in mind when thinking about our
dataset. The SSA numbers include any wage earners whatsoever, even part-time
workers like students and teenagers. This drags down the aggregate wage
numbers for full-time working adults, which reach $61,372 for households last
year.

So...what do the statistics look like if we remove part time teenagers and
students? I suspect much less attention grabbing than the headline.

------
g9yuayon
Yet many parents still think that nerds are boring. Many students still bully
those who focus on academic excellence. Teachers still think that students
should learn easy peasy stuff because, well, "everyone is f __king unique ",
or let's leave no child behind.

The end result? The people in the middle ground, aka most children, will be
left behind.

------
jdlyga
30k is very low. If your company offers 6 holidays per year, that equals out
to $14.71 per hour. That's below minimum wage in New York City right now.

~~~
ryanmercer
>30k is very low.

Where you live

>$14.71 per hour. That's below minimum wage in New York City right now

Federal minimum wage is 7.25 and that is the minimum wage for many states as
well, mine included. 30k is actually doing decent, after 12.5 years on the job
I only make 33k with good reviews every year. If I was suddenly unemployed and
had to go work retail I _might_ get lucky and hire in at 8$ an hour.

------
peterwwillis
Well let's pile some more random data onto this tire fire and jump to some
conclusions. _(edit: comparing 2015 to 2017)_

How much do Americans earn?

2015 data [1]: median _household_ income was $52K. If you're white. If you're
black, the median is $34K. So, only like, 1/3 less. Or if you're asian, the
median is $72K.

2017 data [2]: median _household_ income apparently jumps to $62k. If you're
white it's $65k, black it's $40k, asian $81k.

Then the Social Security data (from 2013) shows the median net compensation
for _individuals_ is $28K. And according to tax data, the bottom 50% of
taxpayers make less than $34K.

Since the poverty level for a family of 4 (in 2017) is $25k, that means a
majority of families of 4 (which, again have to pay 4x for more food,
clothing, transportation, education, and miscellaneous) have a bit more than
subsistence level money.

2017 data [3]: Census claims the poverty level for a household of 1 is $12k.
What? Who the fuck is living in America on $12k a year?

Adding up all the people making less than $15k comes to ~28% of Americans, or
92 million people, just above to below poverty level (SSA data for 2017 [5]).
But Census poverty data [6] says only 12% are in poverty. There's a huge gap
between the SSA's numbers of people and their net compensation, compared to
the Census's formulation of how many people are in poverty. How is there a gap
of 52 million people in calculating the poverty rate? Can someone point out
what's going on?

GDP is also higher than median household income, which doesn't take inflation
into account.

[1] [http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-do-americans-earn-
in-201...](http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-do-americans-earn-
in-2015-household-income-wages-real-income-gdp/) [2]
[https://www2.census.gov/programs-
surveys/demo/tables/p60/263...](https://www2.census.gov/programs-
surveys/demo/tables/p60/263/table1.xls) [3] [https://www2.census.gov/programs-
surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...](https://www2.census.gov/programs-
surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-poverty-thresholds/thresh17.xls) [4]
[https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-26...](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.html)
[5] [https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-
bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2017](https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2017)
[6]
[https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-26...](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.html)

edit: in the Census report
([https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.pdf))
they mention that you have to adjust all pre-2014 numbers by increasing them
by 3.14 percent, due to changes in reporting....

~~~
sascha_sl
The median Asian income is easily explained - only educated/relatively rich
Asians can afford to immigrate. Most immigration is relatively recent (60s to
present) so their status hasn't really had time to change a lot.

~~~
jki275
Citation? There are certainly rich Asians who immigrate, but I know plenty of
people who immigrated and are absolutely not rich at all.

Many Asians who immigrate have little to nothing except an education, some
don't even have that. We brought many over during the time frame of the
Vietnam war who had nothing at all.

~~~
sumedh
> Many Asians who immigrate have little to nothing except an education

Are Indians included in Asians?

------
justaguyhere
Anyone else having a hard time with the infograph? Why not just use the usual
rectangular shape instead of circle?

------
chrisbrandow
Would be awesome to see the same chart but broken down by what percentage of
income each category represents

------
lorax
> 48% of wager earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median
> wage

I'm surprised. I expected that 50% of wage earners would make less or equal to
the median wage. If for no other reason than the definition of median.

~~~
neaanopri
If you're going to be this pedantic, 50 is greater than 48. They're not wrong.

------
dzonga
but hey capitalism, is the greatest invention since we discovered we could
wipe our behinds. Problem, with America is there's a lot of embarrassed 'to-
be' millionaires. Once everyone accept it's okay to be average and life a
average lifestyle safe-guarded by the a social net, a lot of people will be
lifted from poverty.

~~~
oldboyFX
What's your point? Can you please elaborate?

------
alkibiades
stopped reading at "net". misleading title

------
adamnemecek
The crisis never ended, it just changed shape.

------
mc32
Yet many talking heads insist that cheap (under the table) labor from
undocumented workers has negligible effect on earnings of poorly educated
Americans (rural or inner city). They still think abandoning TPP was bad, that
playing tough with China is bad.

Dems used to protect the working class till the 80s, they used to be anti-
globalists (till Clinton) then they got the fever for corporate money and sold
them down the river and only half heartedly pay lip service to them. The only
one left caring is Bernie, but he’s too far left for traditional labor.

------
mirimir
It is a sad situation. But the article doesn't support the title. Because I
only see one time point. And "vanishing" requires comparison.

A few decades ago, at what was arguably the peak of the US middle class,
relatively few adult married women worked outside the home. But of course,
they _did_ work. It's just that they didn't get paid.

Or rather, they got paid through sharing their husbands' income. What's
happened since is that both partners often work, but aggregate inflation-
adjusted income (aka household income) has stagnated. Maybe even declined.

Anyway, the point is that, a few decades ago, maybe 30%-40% of workers earned
nothing. So to get meaningful results, you need to look at aggregate household
income over time. Including both partners, and children. And you also need to
net out childcare expenses.

Also, I note that TFA relies on W2 data. So what about consultants, whose
income is reported on 1099s? But maybe they're a minor factor, and can be
ignored.

And finally, it's my impression that executive incomes are typically capped at
a $million or so. With the rest paid as stock options and such.

~~~
redbeard0x0a
One problem with the aggregate household income being added up is there isn't
an accounting for worked hours (basically doubling the hours by having 2
people working for a company).

A different, but simple comparison would be to take minimum wage in 1968
($1.60), adjust for inflation ($11.62 - 2017) and then compare to our current
minimum wage ($7.25). So had minimum wage been tied to inflation, it would be
right around $12/hr right now.

~~~
mirimir
Arguably you're not doubling the hours. Because decades ago, women worked at
home, but weren't paid.

~~~
octorian
And then you should also factor in the value of the work women did at home,
and weren't paid for. Because they're now having to pay someone else to do
that work, which reduces the effective income gain of them working.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, very true. And that makes it worse.

I do think that the US middle class is shrinking. But there's a lot more
involved than TFA addresses.

------
rayiner
If $30,000 per year is "substandard" then the rest of the developed world must
be positively impoverished: [https://mises.org/wire/when-it-comes-household-
income-sweden...](https://mises.org/wire/when-it-comes-household-income-
sweden-and-germany-rank-Kentucky). There's a very legitimate criticism to be
made about the plight of the poor in the U.S. But the U.S. middle class has it
better than almost everyone else in the world. They make a lot more money than
in Europe, and pay far less taxes. (Indeed, the poor in the U.S. are so bad
off precisely because the middle class pays far less taxes compared to their
European counterparts. The difference between Trump's tax code and Sweden's is
not corporate tax rates, but individual tax rates, particularly for people
outside the top 1%.)

In reality, $30,000 is a pretty decent income for a young single person in
Atlanta, where a 1BR apartment near a subway stop can be had well under
$1,000. It's tough for someone trying to support a family of four, but by and
large those people don't make $30,000. The median income for people 35+ is
$50,000. And the median household income of a married couple with kids is
$85,000.

There is also the fact that, even if there were zero income inequality
(everybody got paid the same), the median income would be about $50,000 (13
trillion in personal income divided by about 250 million working-age people).

~~~
fzeroracer
This is remarkably ignorant of the actual circumstances that lower-class
Americans have to deal with, especially when you share almost improbable
statistics that are completely out of touch with reality.

30,000 is far from a decent income considering people get gouged on health
insurance, which effectively functions as another tax on their post-tax
income. When you start adding in the costs of food, internet, phone, utilities
etc the end result is much more dire. This is not even counting the fact that
Americans work more for less, considering people in Sweden, your example, I
guarantee you get far more time off, have more job security and considerably
better benefits.

~~~
scarface74
According to paycheckcity.com, 30K a year is a net income of $2000 a month in
GA.

Rent - 800

Food - 400

Power/Water/Gas - 300

Internet - $50

Cell - $50

These are all reasonable numbers for Atlanta.

It would be a stretch and you should probably have a room mate to give you
some breathing room but it can be done. Also if you have roommates, you could
afford a car and insurance.

My son is living on his own in Atlanta so I know the expenses are accurate.

We keep him on our family insurance and we can until he is 26.

~~~
iron0013
"We keep him on our family insurance and we can until he is 26."

You really buried the lede. Will you also pay the health insurance for all the
other hypothetical Atlanteans that you're claiming can get by on 30k?

~~~
scarface74
Worse case, insurance on the exchange is $440 a month but I would assume
someone making $30K has a full time job with group insurance. If not, and
since it would be pretax - add $5280 a year.

~~~
iron0013
I wish that were a safe assumption, but many, many--perhaps most--low-wage
workers have jobs that keep them just below the full-time threshold so that
the employers do not have to provide insurance.

One good way to find our about why it's so difficult to get by on ~$30k is to
talk to someone (or multiple people) who make that little. You'll find that
the vast majority of the time the fantasy that they blow their money on
iphones and drugs evaporates, and the reality that healthcare, housing,
childcare, student loan payments, etc are all much more expensive than you've
estimated shines through.

~~~
scarface74
$30K a year would be $15/hour full time. What single part time job that would
have to pay more than 15/hr would get someone to $30K?

