this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Maybe these terms mean something different to y'all but in NZ Living Wage is considerably higher than the minimum wage. And you definitely can live on minimum wage, but not well. I'd definitely expect making icecreams to be a minimum wage job. For reference NZ minimum wage is $23.15 ($14.25 US) Living wage is $26 ($16.01 US) . What's a US living wage?
Depends where you live. Some places I've lived, people would struggle to live off of $20 an hour. Other places, you'd be one of the wealthiest people in the city if you made $30 an hour.
It varies drastically. Where I live, in a moderately-sized city, the hourly living wage—according to MIT—is listed as $21.13 ($34.25 in NZ). Quite frankly, I think that's much too low, considering price gouging and the astronomical health care costs in the US. I've made that much, but it wasn't even enough to add to my savings, and I certainly would've been fucked if I got seriously sick... even with insurance.
The minimum wage here (and federally, though many states have increased their own minimum wages) has been $7.25 ($11.75 NZ) for 15 years... and it was too low back then.
No one can survive on that wage anywhere, at least unless you're not paying for housing (and even then, I have serious doubts). Conveniently, the amount listed as a "poverty wage" is $7.24.
I just looked up the two cities I referenced in my other comment on the website you mentioned. For one adult with no children, working 40 hours a week, the more expensive one is listed as $36.64 and the less expensive one is listed as $21.29.
$36.64 definitely sounds closer to an actual living wage for my city, too.
I'm curious, did you go to livingwage.mit.edu? Their page for my city only lists a single amount for a living/poverty/minimum wage for one adult woth no kids.
I did go to that website. Both the pages I looked at had multiple columns for different numbers of adults and children.
Yeah that minimum is awful. I guess one of the problems with comparisons is that cost of living varies between countries. Probably need a % of average wage to get something more comparable