LogFAQs > #962625285

Technically in many places you don't even need an apartment/home to live, and living out of your car/van is becoming more and more common in some places, but yeah a livable wage should be based on the cost of "living" in an area, including a 1 bedroom apartment, utilities, insurance,internet (mandatory at this point),transportation costs and food.

The question then becomes how many hours should be required to obtain that. I propose that requiring 40 hours at that wage is too much and it should be estimated on a 30 hour work week. IF you can get 40 hours or more, great, you have extra money, but not all jobs will give you 40 hours and you shouldn't be required to work 2 jobs.

In my area for instance about the lowest you can get a 1 bedroom at this point is $1200 a month. Add in $100 for utilities and internet, 400 for food (you can live on less but everything is expensive now so that is a good average), 50 for transportation (low but doable), there is no insurance cost here if you make less than 3000$ per month. The total base cost of living here then should be around $1750. To have that much left over though, taxes will take about $100 out, so for ease say 1850$ base pay before taxes.

If you divide that by 120 hours (30 hours a week for 4 weeks), you end up with a base living wage of
$15.41 per hour. The min wage in this state right now is $14.49 an hour, almost a dollar less, but most place do pay at least $15/hr now....so most places are paying a living wage based on the above criteria.......and only requiring a person to work 30 hours.

That also doesn't factor in that many of the lower pay jobs include tips. There are still a ton that don't, but even subways and many other fast food places (papa murphys etc) all have tip jars now. Tips are separate from base pay in WA, so those jobs often pay significantly more after tips are factored in.