>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages.
Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.
> Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.*
Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate.
$58/day = $1740 for 30 days
Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread)
Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway)
Fuel for a single person... $200/month (assume 2 tanks / week)
Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel)
Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo
Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo
It's hard to imagine someone who's so out of touch with reality that they think they can get away with claiming minimum wage is higher than $7.25 in high cost of living areas. In Houston, Texas the minimum wage is ... $7.25/hr. Cost of living here isn't approachable to minimum wage.
This doesn't even start to pay for taxes, retirement investments, medical emergencies, vacations, legal disputes, education costs, or heaven forbid having family.
I don't know where you live, but you're the one that is out of touch. 2 tanks a week? 200 bucks a month for shit tier food? Ever heard of cooking? 1400 a month rent?
I've spent time in Houston, on minimum wage, and in the past decade. It was alright. I even had the money to go out drinking every weekend, by Rice university at that. Usually when you hear arguments like this and you get down to brass tacks, you start to hear the arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke."
> arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke."
Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter?
One of my friends has $20 to spend on herself after her frugal bills and doing a body crushing job (no "fat" like retirement savings, or medical insurance). I look at it like she earns 50 cents an hour.
Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life? Or is that a dream only for the middle class? Work usually costs us immense amounts of time, let alone the other personal costs of work for many.
> Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter?
No.
> Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life?
Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life are free. And sure, if you have money to spend on fun things, have at it. If you don't and you want to, try finding a way to do it. It really is up to you. But the idea that if you do not have disposable income to engage in consumerism you're going to be unhappy, well I'll just say that's a terrible starting point for your argument, and a mindset that breeds unhappiness quicker than tight finances.
> Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life are free.
No. No. Happiness is extremely difficult to find if you are financially insecure.
Money has a marginal effect on happiness after a certain limit. But to say money doesn't buy happiness is an utterly stupid lie repeated for ages by those that have more than enough money.
You know something ive noticed? I've never actually heard a minimum wage worker talk about 1400 a month rent. Ive heard them say rent is too high, but I have never heard them say that rent is 1400 dollars. It always seems to be the people who "don't have to live on minimum wage, thank god."
I think what is happening is young professionals who make decent money and come from middle class backgrounds and have never lived outside of the uptown exclusive areas see their rent and say "I can't imagine how hard it would be for minimum wage workers" thinking they live with the same expenses.
Ive lived in 2 of the largest metropolitan areas in the US for 2 decades, and my rent has never been over 800 dollars. That's exorbitant to me, but that's still a far cry away from 2 grand a month. I know there are a few extremely overpriced cities in the US, but in the rest of the cities, if you're paying above 1k a month for a one bedroom you're trying to live somewhere that you chose to live precisely because it was more exclusive and you can't blame the world for making that decision.
You say $58/day for 30 days. That's working the whole month with no days off. That's not anybody's life that I know.
It's better to estimate 168 hours per month worked. That's 4 full-time work weeks of 5 days a week plus an extra day. With 12 months in the year, you're still effectively short a few days, but it's close enough.
So $7.25 * 168 is $1218
Let's ignore every other expense. Let's say you walk everywhere, use the library for internet, whatever.
Average rent is roughly that.
You are fucked from the start to just put a roof over your head. That's also assuming that job is 40 hours a week. Giving 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, you have 72 hours left over. Some of that time will be dedicated to commuting, hygiene, eating, etc. You might be able to swing a second full time job, but that's just your life from then on.
Also 2 tanks per week, that's insane. Even when I was driving 50-ish miles each way, I was getting gas about twice every three weeks. With a daily 100 mile commute, I'd say my fuel costs were in the neighborhood of $100 per month.
Your insurance is also way out of whack. Old cars have cheaper insurance. I have a 2017 model and pay $700-ish every 6 months. And it wasn't much worse when it was new.
I'm glad I don't have to fit my expenses into a minimum wage budget, but some of your numbers are pretty high.
I buy gas once every 2 or 3 weeks and spend $45 on a phone plan with 4 GB of LTE (US; I guess that can fit the definition of basically no internet). My car insurance (with collision and unlimited medical) is less than $500 for 6 months.
I would probably balk at paying much more than $800 in rent. The rental market here is pretty thin (I think part of it is I don't know where to look), but I see a listing for $1100 for a 4 bedroom house. Electricity+water+gas would be in the range of $250 for 1 person (and less for several as heating is a major utility cost here).
Cost of living across the US varies wildly. The numbers are pulled from my most recent billing cycle for Houston and partly extrapolated to minimum wage (which I am most definitely not, but have friends who are).
My rent is $1500/mo for 920sqft inside the 610 loop. The leasing office wanted $2000/mo for new contracts in October last year.
It's really hard to find places for $800 within a 30 minute drive of any office in Houston. All of my friends have the same problem. I'm looking to buy a home for a similar reason.
Living far enough out to have rent reduced to $800 is offset by increased amount of time driving and therefore increased costs in fuel. So I bought gas twice a month before the pandemic with a 5 minute drive to the office. When I lived 30 minutes out, I bought gas twice a week.
Car insurance depends a lot on vehicle, driver age, etc. $300/mo was quoted to some younger family last summer -- they were outraged because it was half-again their car payment. I pay $600/6-mo.
Those office workers rely on a huge infrastructure of other services -- food preparation, cleaning, maintenance workers, parking lot attendants, etc. etc.
The people who work those jobs should have the same access to their worksites as anyone else. Our willingness to tell people who make less money they should just "live farther away" and have longer commutes is awful. No, we should fix our cities so that we support a range of incomes and workers in one place.
Office jobs are less interchangeable than service jobs though. I'd expect someone with a job in a grocery store or restaurant to always be looking for a position closer to where they wanted to live compared to an office worker looking for suitable, better positions in locations that that would have a shorter commute.
(the service workers would be looking for better positions too, but the pay differences between similar positions are smaller there)
Wow. In Spain you would pay between €150 to 200 per year of insurance for the typical old cheap car. 400/year for a nice, semi luxury one. I knew some things were expensive in the States, but this particular one surprised me a lot.
It's not typical in the States. I own a new vehicle, have comprehensive insurance, and pay Geico ~$60/mo. I suspect that someone paying $300 for an old vehicle has either (a) an expensive low-deductible plan, (b) a driving record with past insurance claims, or (c) an expensive old car.
A lot depends on the state, type of coverage, driving history, and which company you use. The average range in Texas is ~$45-165/month depending on coverage[1]. I personally pay a bit over $50/month for a 2010 Honda Accord in California.
I wouldn’t take the costs listed in the parent comment literally.
One side effect of the US not having universal healthcare (and overpaying massively for healthcare as one result) is that leaks into litigation on other insurance for just about everything from cars to homes to retail business etc...
Our non profit Parent teacher association and the schools themselves have to carry insurance for events in case someone happens to get injured.
Depending on the car and where you live insurance can be lower or higher. Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies (eg: this is not a daily driver car and you agree not to exceed a low number of miles yearly) or parked insurance (a few hundred miles a year), there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA.
Tribal reservations don't require license plates or insurance usually, and you cab choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside.
> Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies or parked insurance, there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA.
Absolutely beg to differ. I was on a high-deductible, low-benefit plan for a two-year old used economy car in Louisiana with no marks on my driving record for $250/month. The insurance cost was more than the monthly cost of the car. That being said, it was more than the state mandated liability insurance, but it still wasn't anywhere near the levels of insurance I now have in Washington State on a brand new Tesla Model 3. As you mentioned, it's highly dependent on where you live, but it's absolutely feasible to be paying $200-$300/month for insurance.
Edit: Apologies to parent comment. This was a reading comprehension failure.
Louisiana is high because of the plaintiff friendly courts where even minor accidents are litigated, the trial lawyers making money off of it, and the traffic courts which bargain down speeding tickets to brake tag violations all the time (which is priced in by the insurance companies)
> and you ca[n] choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside.
I think you are ignoring the third party risks - damaging an expensive car or hurting someone. In that situation, you use insurance if you want to protect your money. If you have no money, insurance make little sense, and you just suck up the risks of pranging your beater.
Self insurance is not legal if you do not meet your state's requirements for cash set aside for self insurance purposes and vehicle count. This is usually a sizable sum of money that you need to set aside to self insure.
You can get cheaper coverage, but it's barely insurance at that point. They'll sell you the bare minimum that's legally allowed to be sold as insurance even if it doesn't cover liability, medical costs, etc.
The impoverished don't spend that much on car insurance. They do spend a surprising amount on cars, though: either many repairs, or buying replacement used cars when the last one gives out.
If they're really in a bad spot, they'll be buying these cars financed. You don't want to be in a position where you're paying off a car that long since was sold for scrap steel price at a junkyard.
Also a smartphone is a must: they often don't have a traditional computer at all! An internet-capable phone might be the only way they can access email, unless they're truly destitute and using libraries for internet access.
You’re clearly out of touch and over inflating numbers. $200/month for groceries is nothing but cheap carbs? $1400/month for rent? Are they living in their own 1 bedroom in the middle of the city?
$50/week in food is doable, but it takes some careful planning. I'd be impressed at someone who could purchase fresh vegetables and fruit, balanced whole grain carbs, and a healthy protein of their choice, spices sufficient to produce a reasonable variety of meals, plus some occasional luxury food items for that budget.
Doing that could easily add an hour (or in particularly bad cases, two hours!) each way to your commute. Some people do make that tradeoff, but it seems really unpleasant.
The big issue is that transit accessibility is priced into rent, so while parts of US cities might actually be reasonable to get around with public transportation, you'd never be able to afford to live there with a low income.
If you live anywhere with public transit that's complete enough and reliable enough to get you to work on time, you're paying more in rent to make that happen. It might be cheaper but not by a lot
If you go by the numbers in the post I responded to, this isn't true, at least not where I live. The $1400 figure is pretty much exactly what I pay in rent, and I have no problems getting to work with public transport for $100/month.
To be fair, I live in Europe, but this is why I asked the question "is it really that bad?", to which the answer appears to be yes.
Minimum wage was never intended to cover all the above, and it never has. Minimum wage is for teenagers working after school or weekends, or students with no (yet) marketable skills.
>Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread)
>Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway)
>Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo
>Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel)
These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not. You seem to be talking about your general finances (ie. your expenses > your income), whereas I interpreted mywittyname's comment as saying that the job itself is a net loss (ie. your cost of getting the job > your income from job).
>Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not
They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money to pay for them.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Your argument wasn't in good faith. You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably false statement. Then you're also claiming that the cost of living is a sunk cost.
I think a better phrasing of his argument would be "if you take that job, the additional costs will not outweigh the income you get from that job". Put in another way, your net surplus after a month will be more with the job than without, irrespective of whether it is actually positive.
> Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job.
Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job.
> I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement.
> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
>Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job.
That makes zero sense from an accounting point of view.
>> I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement.
>> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
1. I'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a livable wage" from that comment.
2. you seem to be fixated on "expenses" meaning living expenses (eg. rent, food, clothing, etc.), whereas I was only talking about expenses related to getting the job (eg. transport). This was pointed out several comments ago.
> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
> I'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a livable wage" from that comment.
The comment you replied to stated:
> There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation.
Transportation is just a single one of those costs. Nobody in their right mind is going to get a job that they recognize won't pay for their expenses and many people consider more expenses than just transportation.
> I was only talking about expenses related to getting the job (eg. transport).
That wasn't clear and is no doubt where our discussion went astray
>many people consider more expenses than just transportation.
You (and other people) seem to think that food, housing, and healthcare is an expense in getting a job, but that makes zero sense from an accounting point of view. This is trivially proven with a thought experiment: let's say you were unemployed and had $2000/month in "required" expenses, and a job offered you $1000/month. Are you going to turn down that job because it "won't pay for my expenses"? Of course not, even though you're still losing money from an overall cashflow perspective, taking the job still provides you a +$1000 improvement to your financial situation[2].
[1] although I suppose you would need less calories if you didn't work, but I think that's safe to ignore
[2] for simplicity we can ignore government subsidies that gets cut off when you exceed a certain amount of income, or unemployment.
> that makes zero sense from an accounting point of view
Well the world doesn't work like your armchair accounting.
> a job offered you $1000/month. Are you going to turn down that job because it "won't pay for my expenses"?
$1000/month is _less_ than that minimum wage. So I'll assume it's indeed a part time job.
Taking that job means 4 hours less time each day looking for a better job because you're busy with this part time one. Not only 4 hours less for work, but another 1 or 2 hours each day because now you're driving to and from that job. So 6 hours less each day. That's an expense.
Now that you're working it also means being less eligible for any government assistance. $1000/month to work 4 hours/day while taking $800 less government assistance comes out to... a net of $200/month. For 4 hours/day of work and an additional 2 hours/day for transportation.
If you look at the raw money, you're making more money. Homelessness is on the horizon and inching ever closer even if it's approaching slower.
Are those 6 hours to you really worth your time when you could have spent those 6 hours trying to find an even better job?
And when you do reach homelessness, is that $1000/month job going to continue employing you?
I think that's the dilemma that the commenter at the start of this thread posits. Jobs are "available" but they're not sustainable. And people are turning down $18/hr stressful part-time jobs because they can't afford them.
>Well the world doesn't work like your armchair accounting.
ah yes, just slap "armchair" in front of something to invalidate someone's position.
>Taking that job means 4 hours less time each day looking for a better job because you're busy with this part time one
>Are those 6 hours to you really worth your time when you could have spent those 6 hours trying to find an even better job?
The money you "earn" searching for a job is highly variable, and I don't see any attempts at quantifying it. If you were recently employed for $4000/month, your time might very well be spent looking for a job rather than taking the next min. wage job, but if you were unemployed for 6+ months and your previous job only barely paid better than minimum wage, the ROI is probably not there.
>Not only 4 hours less for work, but another 1 or 2 hours each day because now you're driving to and from that job. So 6 hours less each day.
Aren't part time jobs closer to "8 hours a shift but you come a few times a week" rather than "4 hours a shift but you come in 5 days a week"?.
>Now that you're working it also means being less eligible for any government assistance. $1000/month to work 4 hours/day while taking $800 less government assistance comes out to... a net of $200/month. For 4 hours/day of work and an additional 2 hours/day for transportation.
Thank you, that's the type of numbers I was looking for in the original comment.
>And when you do reach homelessness, is that $1000/month job going to continue employing you?
Would you rather be on the streets in 10 months or 5 months? The choice seems clear.
To me it looks like you two are talking past each other. In fact, I think you're both right. gruez point can be summarized as "if you're having a minimum wage job, your loss at the end of the month is smaller compared to having no income at all" [0], which is a possible interpretation of the comment that sparked this thread [1]. This is also the reason he does not account for food, while you do. Your (inetknght's) point is that "with a minimum wage job, you'll make a loss at the end of the month". As far as I read it, gruez actually doesn't try to make the point that a minimum wage job is sustainable, so there's no contradiction.
[0] Compared to, for example, driving for Uber, where at the end of the month the cost for car+fuel+maintenance might cost you more than you earned, increasing your net loss.
> There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation.
> That makes zero sense from an accounting point of view.
If your point of view prevents you from understanding that people need shelter, food, and clothing in order to not die, and must be alive in order to work, then your point of view might not be sufficient.
First off, you need transportation to work. In most of America, this means, you need a car, gas, insurance, and maintenance.
Secondly, you need uniforms. These are often paid for out of your check and come from companies that have pretty comfortable markup.
Then you have the "expensive to be poor items" Such as getting your paycheck on what amounts to a Visa gift card, because cheap employers are transitioning to payment services that offload the cost of associated with payroll onto the employees. These cards have relatively high maintenance fees, and charge for things like actually getting your money.
That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so.
I've gone through this with younger siblings over the years. One in particular was a delivery driver, and factoring in cost of their car, the only reason they thought they were making money was because they were hiding the depreciation on their car through very long car loans and were not paying for the insurance coverage they should have been.
Most low wage positions are only possible because they are subsidized by someone else, maybe it is a parent who lets them live rent free, or they subsist on credit card debt and payday loans to handle emergencies.
>>> That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so.
Split shifts is a horror story. I've seen my younger sister working at a restaurant, the main hours are 12am-2pm then 7pm-11pm.
What are you supposed to do during the massive break in the middle? It's royally screwing up your day.
To make things worse, a trip in the tube and back will cost you £3 to £5, a sizable chunk of your first hour (£8/hour pretax).
As if the night hours and pay were not terrible enough, the hours are set daily on a short notice. You constantly must adjust your schedule and if there's less hours to do you simply don't get paid.
But that has nothing to do with GP's claim? GP was talking about your "net pay is below zero", meaning that the job itself pays negative. eg. you get paid $50/day but spent $55/day to earn it. Your comment seems to be about the minimum wage not being able to sustain a given living standard, eg. you get paid $50/day but you need to spend $55/day to survive.
I read their comment differently than you did, but even if I hadn't I don't quite understand your objection. By definition if you're spending $55/day to survive, you're spending $55/day to earn your pay, if nothing more. The situation you describe is not sustainable either. Please clarify.
He is making a distinction between cost to survive (I.e. food, shelter, etc) and cost to have the job (I.e. transport).
"net pay is below zero" means (In his interpretation) that the cost of having the job is greater than the amount the job pays. This is unrelated to the cost of surviving.
First off, it's not $50 per day, because you're probably paying income tax. But let's assume it is.
Second, it's not really "per day", that's an average. Most bills recur monthly. Assuming a month of four weeks, and working 5 days per week, that's 20 * $50 = $1000 per month. Doesn't that seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc? I pay more for that in rent every month.
>seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc?
everything in that list except for transportation are sunk costs. In other words, you're paying for those regardless of whether you have the job or not.
>...unless you're not paying for those because you literally don't have any money.
That's not how accounting works. If you got a FAANG job that paid $300k/year, then proceeded to blow $60k on a tesla, your net pay for the job isn't $240k.
Right, but at that minimum wage job you're not going to blow that $60k on a Tesla. You're not even going to blow $10 to go look at a Tesla. You're going to blow $2k on a root canal because your food is crap and your medical coverage is worse.
Also, that $60k on a Tesla for the FAANG worker amounts to a small percent of the worker's disposable income. But that $2k amounts to over 100% of the minimum wage worker's disposable income.
> Right, but at that minimum wage job you're not going to blow that $60k on a Tesla. You're not even going to blow $10 to go look at a Tesla. You're going to blow $2k on a root canal because your food is crap and your medical coverage is worse.
Way to miss the point. Whether the item is a tesla or a can of beans is irrelevant. The point is that if previously you couldn't afford X, after getting a new job you could afford X, then you can't say that X is a cost/expense of getting the job.
What point are you trying to make? The federal minimum wage is not enough to cover people's expenses, whether those expenses come from holding the job or not is irrelevant as to whether such a situation is "sustainable." This feels like pedantry.
> The point is that if previously you couldn't afford X, after getting a new job you could afford X, then you can't say that X is a cost/expense of getting the job.
They're not "sunk costs", they're "basic necessities". They have to be paid for every month (or whatever period), so if a job doesn't provide enough money to pay for them, it is not paying a living wage.
You can't just say "they need those to live" as if that absolves you of explaining how to pay for the things they need to live.
Unlike capital equipment a business doesn’t pay for the cost of replacing labor as it ages. The cost in the US of raising a child is about $250,000 or about $3 per hour over 40 years. Businesses expect a pool of qualified and educated labor but don’t pay for childcare expenses.
Employees are expected to have reliable transportation to get to the employers place of business but they do not cover transportation expenses. The cost of $400 a month for reliable transportation works out to $2.50 per hour.
Employees are typically required to have work appropriate clothing. In the US this cost has often been pushed to employees. In some cases even tool costs have been pushed to employees.
Employees have wear and tear on joints due to repetitive movements which will eventually have to be treated. Machines need maintenance and businesses are expected to pay the costs but with labor that is pushed back to the employee.
The economics of minimum wage only work short term for people who are young, healthy and with no children where experience gained will lead to a higher paying job in the near future.
Your replies down thread indicate an extremely narrow interpretation of 'expenses' here, namely only those financial costs directly related to employment. Taking that interpretation, you're probably correct that nearly all jobs offer net-positive pay counting only the those inputs from the employee. You're right that someone with better off in immediate financial terms with basically any job than no job.
However, that's something other than the 'sustainable' wage in the GP comment, since that doesn't count costs of the labor input! Each of us has only so much labor to sell in a given month, and need to get enough in return to support, you know, continuing to live and sell our labor. Sure, being employed at wage that does not provide a basic level of dignity is less worse than being completely destitute, but it's a bit disingenuous to argue that being less-worse-off is 'sustainable'.
I think his (gruez's) interpretation is the obviously reasonable one, and I'm not sure why he's getting bashed so severely here. Note that op made the claim that "net pay" was literally negative, which seems to comport totally with the interpretation given, and not at all with an interpretation of "sustainability" referring to a living wage.
I think quoting the unsustainable part of OP instead of the net pay part led to lots of misinterpretation. Sustainability in a pay context is IMO strongly linked to a living wage, or at least a survivable wage.
For starters, you don't want to have to work every single day. If you work 5 days out of every 7, you only have $41.43 to spend per day.
The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month. That's $30 per day. Even if you get roommates, that's going to cost you at least $15 per day.
That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care (since most minimum wage jobs don't include it), and all of the other expenses of life. And then pray you don't get sick -- even with health insurance you're now losing income.
It adds up fast. There is basically nowhere in the US that this is a living wage. At best you can barely scrape by with no margin for error -- and certainly no money to spend on training for a better job.
>The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month [...] That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care
Seems like we're talking about different things. I was talking about the net gain/loss from getting a job, whereas you're talking about your overall living situation.
I've looked for about 20 minutes and haven't been able to find a reliable figure nationally, so from a quick search on apartments.com for Minneapolis (random city not known for high cost of living), the 20th percentile studio apartment is $1000. If you want to split an appartment, I'm going to check 1 bedroom, since 2 unrelated people in a studio isn't really practical. Then the 20th percentile is about $1150. (on average for these apartments, parking is an extra $100 or so which you need if you have to shop by price, not location).
So do you have a link to a reliable figure as to what 20th percentile rent is? "I'm sure you would agree with me if you knew a statistic that I'm not going to share with you" is hardly a convincing argument.
I claimed 20th percentile IN MINNEAPOLIS was $1000. That just means Minneapolis is more expensive than the national average. You're the one claiming that a 20th percentile apartment is affordable on minimum wage, so how about a source for what that figure is?
For some other random cities using the same methodology (1 bedroom)
Wichita: 500
St Louis: 650
Columbus: 800
Pittsburgh: 850
Dallas/Fort Worth: 950
Nashville: 1000
Orlando: 1200
Sacramento: 1200
What methodology would you use to find this data if Appartments.com isn't reliable?
It's not that apartments.com isn't reliable, I would assume it reliably reports the data it gets.
But most apartments don't get rented through apartments.com, and the ones that don't are skewed towards the lower end of the market.
The 4-flat where the owner is renting out the other 3 places and living in one of them doesn't show up on apartments.com.
I don't know where you find good comprehensive data, you tell me. But if you are looking at bad data because you can't find good data, you are the drunk looking for his keys underneath the street light not because he lost his keys there but because the light is good.
I think the classic example of this is the pizza delivery driver (or now the gig economy food delivery driver).
The driver might think "I made $100 today, great!", but they generally don't have a good sense for their total expenses. Sure, they know how much gas cost them this week, but they don't know how much the next auto repair will be, or how much depreciation they're incurring on their vehicle. And when their auto insurance goes up because they've been driving so many miles, that's out-of-pocket too - no employer is picking that up.
True. Of course, that only scratches the surface of why it's a terrible job. In many locales, policies that cover commercial driving are prohibitively expensive, and the majority of drivers are effectively uninsured (often without realizing it). It's not a stretch to say that insurance fraud is a core part of that industry's business model.
Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.