In many American communities, families working in low-wage jobs make insufficient income to live locally given the local cost of living. Recently, in a number of high-cost communities, community organizers and citizens have successfully argued that the prevailing wage offered by the public sector and key businesses should reflect a wage rate required to meet minimum standards of living. Therefore we have developed a living wage calculator to estimate the cost of living in your community or region. The Calculator lists typical expenses, the living wage and typical wages in the location you have selected.
On July 25, 2007 the Living Wage Calculator was updated with the current minimum wages prevailing at all locations.
There are two ways to select the location you are interested in. From the top of any page, you can either enter some search terms into the search-box, or you can drill down to a particular location by clicking on Select a State and then on subsequent pages selecting the county, and finally the municipality or place.
Note that the search will list any location that contains the search terms and the search is case-insensitive. A search hint: if you know the state enter the 2 letter state abbreviation as one of the terms.
Also on the top of each page are: a link to the Home (this) page a link to Links to related sites and a link to a page documenting the sources of the Data used by the Living Wage Calculator.