Photo: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
Just to make ends meet, American single-parent families of one adult and two children need to have a average salary of $31.80 dollars per hour, a new County Health Rankings study reveals .
However, in reality, according to the data in the report, only a few consumers achieve that level of income, mainly due to stagnant wages.
The study notes that a living wage covers the costs of food, housing, childcare, medical care and transportation, but does not provide retirement savings, higher education costs, emergency savings, or other expenses that can help families gain long-term financial security.
Notwithstanding nte, of the more than 3, 100 counties in the country, only two provide living wages for the average worker, said Keith Gennuso, lead author of the study.
An hourly wage of $66.81 equals about $74,400 Dollars in annual income. The average hourly wage was $31.73 in March, or around $30 , per year, according to the Office of Labor Statistics.
That means many single parent families are falling behind in their ability to afford basics, said Marjory Givens, co-director of County Health Rankings, a program of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
Which Counties Have Living Wages
The two counties where earnings meet or exceed the living wage benchmark are Los Alamos County, New Mexico, and Los Alamos County of Williamson, Tennessee, according to the analysis, which was based on data from 2021 from the Calculate MIT Professor Amy Glasmeier’s MIT Living Wage Dora.
Those two counties “appear to have relatively high incomes with a low and good health outcomes,” Givens noted.
-Los Alamos County, home of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has a median household income of more than $111,000 Dollars.
-Williamson County, Tennessee, near Nashville, has a median household income of about $118, Dollars.
A living wage is not uniform across the country. For example, the study found that the lowest living wage is $29.81 Dollars per hour, which is enough for basic needs in Holmes County, Mississippi, but in areas like New York, covering basic needs costs more.
Workers are now seeing significant wage increases amid a labor shortage, but those raises are being eaten away as inflation far exceeds the typical wage increase.
That is putting more workers under financial stress as they seek to regain their footing Financial.
You may also be interested in:
– How high wages are fueling inflation, a phenomenon not seen since the d epoch of 2021
– US cities where women under 30 years have a salary equal to or greater than that of men
– Why Boeing regrets the deal it made with Trump to renovate Air Force One