Costs have risen for families in every U.S. county since 2021. In this post, we break down six facts about where the cost of living for the typical family has grown the fastest nationally and the key expenses driving that growth.

In this third post of our regional analysis series, we examine how costs and wages have shifted across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania since 2021, and what those trends mean for the families living them and the employers navigating them.

This employer edit, curated specifically for compensation and benefits teams, offers deeper insights on five tactical lessons from Cheese Louise’s experience building and sustaining living wage jobs from the ground up.

The U.S. Pacific division spans remote Alaskan communities; dense metros in California, Oregon, and Washington; and the island economies of Hawai’i, and has experienced some of the fastest basic needs cost growth in the country over the last six years. In this second post in our regional analysis series, we examine how costs and wages have shifted across the Pacific division since 2021, and what those trends mean for families and the employers navigating them.

For restaurant operators who want to pay a stable, living wage year-round, the math requires more than goodwill.

America’s West South Central division spans sprawling Gulf Coast metros and vast rural stretches, and over the last six years has been one of the country's fastest-growing divisions. In this post, we examine how costs and wages have shifted across the division since 2021, and what those trends mean for families and the employers navigating them.

The challenge Most artists lack a reliable compensation framework for knowing what to charge for their work. Rate-setting for creatives has historically been a mix of peer benchmarking, gut feel, and client budgets—none of which account for what it actually costs to meet basic needs where they live and work. Artist-led tech startup ARTPOWER set out to change that by building tortoise, a financial platform with tools, resources, and support designed for artists. The tortoise

Turnover in frontline industries is nothing new, but some sectors like leisure and hospitality and retail trade experience more churn than others. Dayforce's Earning Enough report, powered by our living wage data, shows that women of color, who make up a large share of these industries, are also the least likely to earn a family-sustaining wage. For employers, a workforce that is both underpaid and cycling out carries real risk, and understanding who is falling behind and why

Powered by our county-level living wage data, Dayforce's new Earning Enough report finds that only half of full-time American workers earn enough to meet their family's basic needs, and fewer workers are earning family-sustaining wages than in 2021. In this blog, we dive into what the Dayforce data reveals and why the findings matter for employers today. The five-year trend: Hourly workers lost ground To capture changes in worker earnings between 2021 and 2025, the Dayforce r

Last week, the Living Wage Institute team visited San Antonio, Texas for WorldatWork’s annual Total Rewards conference. Total Rewards brings together compensation and benefits professionals from across the globe tackling the most pressing issues in HR. Of course, being data nerds in a room full of total rewards leaders, we came with a few questions of our own. We ran a very (un)official, live pom-pom poll at our booth on the Expo Floor across three days. Here's what we learne

In our last blog post , we shared a first look at the 2026 living wage data. Here, we dig into how living wages have changed in the last year, the different cost burden drivers for working families across the country, and how where you live shapes what you need to cover your basic expenses. How family budgets have changed since 2025 Between 2025 and 2026, the family-sustaining wage—what one full-time worker needs to earn to support a family of two working adults and two child

What does it actually cost to raise a family in the U.S. in 2026? The answer depends enormously on where you live and who you live with. This post recaps the key insights about family-sustaining living wages from our recent webinar, Inside the 2026 Living Wage Data . Geography matters for living wages Across U.S. counties, family-sustaining wages—or what one full-time worker in a household of two working adults with two children needs to cover expenses—ranged from $19.79 to $

On March 26, 2026, the Living Wage Institute team hosted our annual data webinar to share a first look at the 2026 living wage data and walk through what it means for employers, researchers, and community members. Missed or want to revisit our webinar? Check out the full recording below! Here's a quick rundown of what we covered: Living wage basics We started with a refresher on living wage calculations: ground-up measurements of eight basic needs — including housing, childca

To ensure our data better reflects on-the-ground economic realities, the Living Wage Institute has partnered with PolicyEngine to enhance how we calculate household tax obligations. This partnership represents our continued commitment to delivering accurate, actionable data for the employers, workers, and communities who depend on it. Unlike rent or a grocery bill, taxes aren't always a visible line item in a family's budget—but they represent the gap between what families

As a benefit corporation established in 2023, the Living Wage Institute builds compensation tools for America’s hourly workforce. As part of that work, we maintain and expand the nation’s most comprehensive database of county-level living costs—data that employers use to benchmark compensation, policymakers rely on to set wage policy, and researchers turn to for labor market analysis. The methodology behind our Wage Index database is grounded in decades of research and contin

For millions of Americans, economic self-sufficiency has felt increasingly out of reach. In recent years, the affordability crisis has rippled across communities, with businesses struggling to retain hourly workers, policymakers trying to close the gaps between costs and wages, and families living on the brink of financial instability. Our 2026 living wage data grounds these discussions in local realities. Updated annually and built on over two decades of research, our data c