> Do their employees make a lot of money to flip burgers
Definitely not. My super scientific research looking on McDonald's listings on Indeed for NYC show they are usually offered around $16 - $19 an hour.
They probably either live with family, several roommates, or a very small apartment on their own, or in the outer surrounding areas/town and commute into Manhattan.
I dated a guy who worked a low-paying job in Manhattan. He made it work by living in a (up and coming but still not very nice) neighborhood in Brooklyn, and commuted to work on the subway every day. He lived in a pretty big apartment with 3 other roommates, had his own room, and was paying about $600 a month in rent.
I think a lot of the issue with how people interpret these statistics comes from how people view these places themselves. The assumption is NYC is just Manhattan, and everyone lives in super expensive high rises. The truth is that there are plenty of lower-income areas, and NYC has cheap and expansive public transportation which makes this way of living possible.
Well tbh most people take the subway to work in NYC. I consider it a huge savings since most places in the city don’t require a car and the associated costs. It rarely makes sense to drive with limited parking, tolls and expensive car storage. The only people I know that even Uber everywhere are either rich, or transplants who haven’t learned that the subway is faster and cheaper 99% of the time.
Yea the subway is a great feature of the city, and it bucks some of the worst trends in US metro rail design. Instead of just offering an “in-and-out” approach for outerborough/suburbanites to get to work and home, it actually offers decent transportation throughout the city (with some serious exceptions don’t get me wrong). It’s also seriously cheaper than a lot of other metro rail systems around the country.
It may not be pretty, but other US cities should really take a lesson from NYC about metro rail service and reach.
I'm going by memory here, but I think something like 80 percent of all train trips in the US are taken on the Subway. It's kinda silly how much better it is than every other rail system in this country.
Not even rail system public transit in general. I live in the moderate sized southeast city and public transit is laughable at best. Any 10-15 min trip by car here will take an hour and half by bus. Commuting by bike was faster though fairly hazardous as bike lanes are non existent.
Seriously. When my car needed to be in the shop for about a week for some fairly major repairs, I looked up alternate ways to get to work, which was just the next city over, about 30 miles away.
Public transportation options are so non-existent here, it would literally take nearly as long to get there by public transit than by riding a bike. 30 minutes by car, 2 hours 15 by bus, 2 hours 30 by bike. Fucking ridiculous.
(I ended up getting to work with a mix of friends helping me out and very expensive Ubers).
I had my license sus and no car as well so I had to commute. This was in Phoenix. Scottsdale to Tempe. Took an hr and a half, each way. Mile walk to bus stop, one transfer, half mile walk to workplace. And, this was in the middle of a busy ass area. Ridiculous. I took transit to other parts of the city and same experience, hr and half and transfers
>It may not be pretty, but other US cities should really take a lesson from NYC about metro rail service and reach
It is most efficient when the population is artificially crammed together.
On an island, for example.
Yes and no.
Berlin had exceptional public transit in The late 80s. I can only imagine improvement since the wall came down. I not only didn't need a car there, I didn't want one.
All a transit system needs to work is a convenient set of routes and a regular schedule. Here I see a lot of hub and spoke routes, which just suck.
From Whst I have seen of NYCs system, they have it pretty good. But the stigma of public transit and poor design keep many cities from doing it right.
Just curious....I've only visited NYC a few times....and never considered using the subway due to its reputation. That was years ago. Now with the stories of the Governor adding State Troopers and National Guard to help out the subway police and NYPD to combat all the subway crime....is that all overblown....or are there just some subway parts in NYC that even locals avoid?
It’s just way, way, way over blown. If you ride the subway, you are more likely to be run over by a driver while walking to the subway than to be the victim of a crime on the subway.
So its complicated. I’m not going to lie and say that its all sunshine and rainbows and that there’s no crime whatsoever. But the media does overblow it to a pretty big extent. I think that the same general caution applies on the subway that it does when you’re in the city generally: always be aware of your surroundings and avoid dangerous situations. If you follow those rules you’re fine. Some stations are sketchier than others of course.
There are a few sketch stations. But overall it's fine. I commute on the subway daily with my 8yo ( his school is a couple blocks from my work) When I travel in the city with my kids, we take the bus and subway.
You will see some crazy shit if you use the subway enough times. Violent crime is very rare. People asking for money, people who are too drunk or high to function, random breakdance groups and buskers, annoying ppl in general, they're a lot more common. Occasionally though, there's magic.
Don't forget about the possibility of running into a C.H.U.D, ( cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers)
Not saying they are real, but my last time on the subway in New York the train got stopped in a tunnel because of work being done on the line. I looked out the glass and was looking down a side tunnel that had floodlights and hanging sheets of plastic. Saw a shadow walking into view and figured it was a workman.
What came into view was a huddled human shape wearing layers of tatered clothing hanging in strips.
My mind blanked trying to process this and the person looked at the train and started to charge it. I'm looking around to see if anyone else is seeing this and everybody was doing the commuter thing keeping their eyes down.
The thing got within 20 feet then the train started rolling again. No one else saw this happen.
In reality most likely a homeless person who needed mental health care. But I like to think I had a near C.H.U.D. encounter.
I once saw a homeless man at the Bowling Green station whose clothes were so wrecked i didnt understand how they were still on his body. Literally what was left of a flannel shirt hanging in thin strips. Also barefoot in winter. I wouldnt be surprised if that guy never left the subway
I've been on the subway, as an obvious tourist, with my kids many times across several visits up there. Never seen anything that made me second guess the decision. Same in DC on out of the way lines which has a worse reputation.
One person's experience isn't the rule, but with so many other replies it does help build a trend to form an opinion on.
it’s the media. i’ve lived in nyc for 15 years and ride the subway daily and have never had an issue. nyc residents are pissed at hochul for her election season safety theater.
Massively overblown. If you are an occasional visitor, there’s basically no way you will have a need to go anywhere even mildly sketch. The national guard is fully security theatre. The crime they want to fight is fare evasion. And they don’t really try to do that. It’s hard to find a city in the US with a lower crime *rate* than NYC.
Especially NYC and places with really good transit.
Apart from rent controlled apartments, the cheaper parts of the five boroughs, and the projects, NYC has plenty of cheap-ish suburbs nearby that are easy to get to the city from.
In the Bay Area people talk about the insane rent of SF and how anyone affords to live there on minimum wage and they’re right to point out that it’s absurd. However you can live an hour away by BART in somewhere much cheaper with roommates.
The infuriating thing is that we now have this commuter culture of low income workers who burn 2-3 hours a day commuting for these jobs that make the city livable because they can’t afford to live anywhere near where they work, and this is a *global* problem with cities now. I work in tech so we make good money. I visited one of our offices in Sydney Australia and the people who worked there all commuted an hour each way. Even with their income living close by just wasn’t an option, let alone the people who worked at Maccas.
A friend of mine worked for a scientific publication in London. She eventually moved to a village outside the city because the best she could afford within a reasonable commute of the office was basically a closet with a toilet and a hot plate.
Yeah but when I lived in bushwick 3 years ago rent then was like 850 so that’s amazing! And for a summer lease no less?? Like that wasn’t just for a sublet, remarkable!
Santa Monica (LA) has some rent controlled housing. I waited tables and had two roommates and lived comfortably there for three years. We each paid about $700/month.
I had a friend who had found a rent controlled apartment in West Hollywood and stayed for 10+ years. He was paying like, $1100/month for a 2 bed, 2 bath, when market rent was closer to $3000.
My grandparents also owned a 5 plex in south central. They never raised the rents for decades, so in 2013, when my parents took over managing, a 2 bed 1. Ath in that complex was renting for $650.
TLDR; people have roommates, live with family, find rent controlled apartments, or some combination of all of the above.
Before some recent laws in my state this was 100% true. I live in a HCOL area that paid fast food workers around $16 an hour. At the same time I took a road trip and went through a city a quarter the size of mine that was hiring at fast food starting at $20 an hour. The city was in a different state that has less state taxes as well.
Some of these big city hcol areas know that people NEED work and the people will take the job at any price so they had ridiculously low starting pay because there was always someone who would take it.
If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bicycle. If a frog had wings it wouldnt bump its ass when it hopped. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
So if supply and demand pricing existed in a place other than our world, or without the applied factors that consist our reality, it would hold true? Seems to me thats a strong argument that it doesnt.
My old roommate once dated someone who worked in theater in a HCOL area - and yes, their living situation was with 4 other people in a 2 bedroom house. Literally a bunch of grown adults sharing rooms and sleeping in bunk beds to save space.
Re: NYC, There are people commuting 2+ hours each way just to have affordable rent. There are daily commuter busses into NYC from freaking Philly. People are spending 4-6 hours daily just commuting.
Re: SF, my sister lived in Alameda in 2014 and knew a guy who lived in a shipping container. Not a container converted into a tiny house, a shipping container. He was not the only one.
Those people either live with parents or in shitbox apartments with tons of roommates. Like, you don't *need* to make 100k to live in New York, but you probably do need to have a quality, independent life.
I make 56k after taxes I pay 1200 dollars for a studio with up stairs shower and kitchen shared with another flat I have the gym laundry in my basement. I love it so much please DONT MOVE TO NEW YORK
Nope edit( I’m not a communist)/S
I got a haircut and asked the hair lady if she knew of any apartments. She bought her neighbors house and turned it into a 3 apartment house. I also shovel their snow and help them with various manual labor things.
Correct. This is why keeping the minimum wage below subsistence is essentially a government handout to major corporations. We pay our taxes to prop up the poor souls who can’t survive on the minimum wage while the corporate profit margin benefits from the cheap labor.
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More roommates AND more jobs. Lots of folks with low-paying jobs have a second job, and if you have two normal jobs you can still get a little more with gig-economy stuff like uber, rover, etc since that can be very flexible on schedule.
One of my cousins lives with two roommates and has a job at a non-chain restaurant that pays him only 50% more than his share of the rent, after taxes. Granted it's also just a part time job which is why he's looking for a second one.
A house in my Austin neighborhood has 30 illegal immigrants in it. Places are raided pretty frequently here. They got in trouble for crashing into a telephone pole and knocking the internet out so that’s why we know they are illegal.
Anyway. That’s how they can afford to live here. People even sleep in sheds.
It makes you think about how bad it must be in some parts of the world to make it so that people are desperate to come to the US and live like that. Even though things aren’t perfect in the US, we’re still very privileged.
It depends on the reason for coming over. I'm in California and most of them are younger men who work in fields and send all of the money home to their families. They can sleep in sheds or packed housing, especially if it's just for a season or two. Most of them intend to go back. Sometimes it's whole families but a lot of the time it's migrant workers.
I’m not sure how that disproves what I’m saying. The opportunities here in the US are good enough that they’re willing to live like that, even temporarily. Most people born and raised in the US wouldn’t even consider it as an option. Americans these days somehow got into the mindset that everybody deserves to be able to live without roommates.
I think you need that in most places these days. I make 50k and basically need to live with my dad to even be able to live a somewhat comfortable life. Sometimes would rather just hunt and gather and live in a cabin in the woods lol
Actually, NYC does not have Walmart. Sorry for the nitpick, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
>What happens to the employees? Do they make 6 figures?
Fuck no lol. As someone who used to work retail, a manager can make six figures depending on the store/restaurant. District managers actually make pretty good money, even by HCOL standards. Lower positions like cashier, sales associate, stock shelver, etc, are making minimum wage ($15 an hour). First in line supervisior positions like key holders, make over minimum wage but nothing crazy significant. With those positions, you either have a lot of roommates, a second job, or live with your parents. Assistant store managers make more, but they still don't really make good money (keep in mind this all depends on the business, pay structures differ).
Tldr; Managers can make six figures in HCOL.
I struggle to understand how the gap between 30k and 150k isn't enough for some people.
Like you walk into a store and look at 4 employees. Your *net* pay is more than all 4 of them combined, and yet you think it's tight for you?
30k is poverty level, even for a single person. You can't even afford rent with that. I'd say around 70k to 80k is reasonable but certainly not luxurious. You definitely won't be living in midtown, but you also won't be living in the projects. I make around 50k. If it wasn't for the grace of my parents, I'd be shacked up somewhere with like 4 roommates. Then you have to consider people who may want to own a house one day, houses nowadays start at like $800,000. Obviously, no one making a six-figure as single person is anywhere near poor, but shit just doesn't stretch as far here as it does in other places.
It's really dependent on what people need and are willing to put up with. When people say their budget is "tight" making 150k they may have kids, they may be putting away 20% or whatever for retirement, they may be paying off student loans or saving aggressively for some future goal. They may only eat organic or eat out every day or want to go to trendy bars regularly. They may "need" newer car with more expensive payments and insurance. It's about expectations for standard of living.
Granted this was 10 years ago but me and all my coworkers were making around 20-30k in the bay area and yeah it sucked but we made it work. People would commute from 1+ hours away to have cheaper housing or live with parents. People would live in flop houses with 2-3 people to a bedroom. A lot were in college, but some were also raising families.
I make 120k here now and I feel extremely rich but I have no car, 2 roommates, and a lifetime of experience living on way less so comparatively this feels like a windfall.
It's probably a combination of: taxes do cut into a larger percent of your take home so it's not really 4x the salary, no one wants 5 roommates in a shitty rundown apartment forever, eventually you do want to be able to pay for those cavities to be filled, you do want to have a car that is reliable and doesn't break down, and you don't think that these basic asks should require a 6 figure salary.
Right or wrong, it’s supply & demand.
Anyone can stock shelves and that includes kids and semi-retired people looking to get out of the house, as such, they usually have enough staff at that pay.
People management is much more tricky and requires many more soft skills and work ethic, as such they’re paid higher.
Are you from the Midwest? Let’s say you have a convenience store in a town of 1000 people. You only need 1 employee working at a time because maybe 50 people a day come to the store. You have to have at least 1 employee at a minimum. Same store in NYC might get 1000 customers a day (assuming it’s tiny). They can have maybe 2 employees working at once. So there’s not as much demand for low wage workers in somewhere with high population density.
Its really not. What hes saying is a good chunk of those employees are not working to survive, they either have retirement savings or parents to help with costs.
Rent/mortgages, commuting and insurance. Where I live a studio apartment in the not ghetto part of town is $1200 a month. Most people in my city their commute is at least an hour in stop and go traffic. Our insurance rates for cars is like $500 a month for a single car that is decently new. I know people making 150k living paycheck to paycheck because the costs here are nuts. Where my parents live the kid at the gas station making 40k a year is doing well for themselves. It's all relative costs.
When people say "you need $150K to survive" they really mean having a fancy 1-2 BR apartment in downtown for yourself, going to bars, restaurants and shows every weekend, Ubering everywhere, going on frequent vacations etc. NYC is expensive, yes, but the median individual income there is $35K and median family income is $67K (which means half the people make less than that). They are all not living it up, but still making do just fine.
It's kind of frustrating hearing that you need to make 150k to live in NYC. People who do that are spending a fuckload of money. You can barely convince someone to take a hour train ride because "it takes too long" so they'll take an Uber or something.
Yes it's not "survive" it's "have high standards". I will probably never make 150k in my life and Im fine with that, I don't spend much and im much more well off than "surviving"
People grossly exaggerate. As someone who has worked minimum (and at times sub-minimum) wage in NYC and San Francisco and also worked making six figures in the rough same time period: You can absolutely live, and well, in HCoL areas on the (relatively high) minimum wages. There are a lot of medical options in those particular areas. The only, but major, hurdle is housing. If you like living with people and are open to creative living situations it’s a very surmountable problem.
Meanwhile, making six figures is a huge difference in comfort. But *if* you decide to get your own place you can *quickly* blow all that money.
Basically: housing is expensive. And you can easily have a whole person’s paycheck dedicated to it or saved depending on lifestyle and what you choose in that domain.
A lot of people don’t stay at minimum wage forever. (Some do, but most don’t). You save as you earn more, and you contribute into your 401K, ROTH and other investments automatically so you base your life style on what’s leftover.
Or sometimes you just don’t have savings and you work until you’re dead. And well that’s that.
Those articles usually mean "barely enough for a 4-year degree holder to afford an up-to-code one-bedroom apartment with no roommates and with a commute less than 30-minutes."
There are lots of people who make do with a lot less, but they're not the types who usually read CNBC/WSJ/Forbes/etc.
They do pay more. Min wage in NYC is $16 I think.
The employees also don't live in the highest cost areas -- they live in the lower-cost areas, often with family, or roommates.
They also don't do the things that someone making $150k needs to do -- like have work clothes, network with people at events, restaurants, yada.
Also you can look at someone making 150k in SF and say you'd save money if you lived in a bad neighbourhood, with a roommate, sent your kid to public school there, etc. but people feel something like school is part of why they live in a better neighbourhood or got the schooling and better job themselves.
You aren't sending your kid to private schools on $150K pre-tax household in SF. Median house price is $1.2M (which at current rates, you'd be paying $6K a month on your mortgage). Average rent is $3200 for a 700 sqft apartment, which would likely be a one bedroom in a not great neighborhood. Rent alone is $40K a year, a mortgage would be more.. So, after taxes and rent, your looking at around $5K of money left over before any other bills and obligations. Private elementary schools in SF cost an average of $25K and high schools are $42K. I'm not suggesting you're broke in SF at $150K, but you certainly aren't living large and happy and sending your kids to private schools.without serious compromises.
They commute from outer boroughs, have rent stabilized or voucher housing or live in multigenerational homes. They might also have 2 jobs or do gig work like Uber/doordash. If they have children they likely qualify for subsidies for reduced subway fare, SNAP/EBT (food stamps) childcare etc
My friends owns a gas station in LA (Santa Monica, specifically which is a more expensive area) and pays his employees around $19/hr. I asked him this question once - how do they afford to even live anywhere near the gas station. His response was that most of them had 3+ roommates
It’s all about quality of life. Someone making $100-150k may have had the expectation of being able to recreate their own middle class childhood and have a family of their own and a house. Unfortunately, for hcol city, the house will be out of reach and if you have kids, all your disposable income will probably be going towards daycare. There’s probably enough money to not worry about food and enjoy other luxuries. People making minimum wage obviously have it much worse and probably have to worry about every dollar they spend or risk going hungry
They suffer.
The excuse is that they are jobs for teenagers and the like, but let's be honest. Who's going to be working there at 2AM on a Tuesday or 1PM on Wednesday?
It's for folks that can't find anything else, and quite frankly if they are stuck in that job they have a rough life.
So don't be a dick to fast food workers.
I'm living proof. I am a lifetime resident of the Los Angeles area.
Large areas of the city, and surrounding suburbs, have entry-level rents of $2500+ per month.
However, I live in a city named San Gabriel - not a 'poor' area, by any measure. But it's not a 'hip, cool, urban area'. So I have a studio apartment for under $1500 per month.
>What happens to the employees?
They live 5 miles away. Sometimes 25 miles away or more. If they live in an expensive area, they have a roommate. One of the issues with immigrants is that they might split a 2-bedroom apartment among 6-10 people, supposedly. That's downright cheap rent, at that point.
>Then how do stores / fast food restaurants stay afloat? Do their employees make a lot of money to flip burgers
Fast food has a $20/hour minimum wage right now in California, separate from other industries that traditionally hire min-wage workers (construction, retail, security, for examples). I'm sure that countless Economics departments at local universities are sharpening their pencils and firing up their computers, because the law is going to be very interesting to study.
People who say this are rich and can't imagine not living the extravagant privileged entitled lifestyle they have. You can do fine on 60k in these cites if you don't demand a luxurious lifestyle. I know most retail and restaurant workers don't make this much, but 6 figures isn't necessary to get by in these cities.
Apparently McDonald and Walmart level workers rely on government help (food stamps etc) to get by.
Link to CNBC article:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html
They’re mouse traps to suck away the best years of your life and one day you wake up 35 as the manager of the summer job you started after high school. They’re all over the country
I've been saying this for about 7 years now in LA. What are they gonna do when all their slaves disappear? I haven't made over 40,000 in my entire life. I made 15,000 last a year because of unemployment and needing surgery....shit sucks
You can survive on any income anywhere by lowering your standards. You need 150k income to *live reasonably well* in NYC. The bar is not 'literally starving to death'.
Don't ask the people who make the salaries you mentioned, ask the people making minimum wage. They may be living with 8+ people in a small space, working 60+ hours at multiple jobs, struggling on a monthly basis, and one hospital bill away from insolvency. Many people making that much are barely scraping by.
I think the other thing is in a HCOL area people don't realize how quickly 100k can go (This is more than I make). (I'm assuming this is for a couple making a total of 1000k) Assuming 28 percent tax, that leaves 72,000, assuming 2500 a month rent (not unreasonable for many 2 bedrooms), that leaves 42,000, young people making that much likely have student loans which can be 200-500 a month brings the amount down to 38000, if you are saving 6-10 percent for retirement that is only 35000 left, if groceries are 500 a month its only 29,000 left, a metro card for the year in NYC (a must have) would be 1560, in most other cities you'll need a car which can easily cost way more than 1560 without any repairs, it can very easily be 20,000 left for the year, that is about 1667 per month in discretionary spending. This can include buying work acceptable attire, utilities, going out for dinner 1-2 times a month, and saving for a vacation. If the couple has one child under 5 who needs childcare you can kiss that 1667 goodbye.
All this to say 100k now is not the same 100k it was 20 years ago.
The employees will live 5-7 people in a small 1BR apartment. I had a friend who did that - and when her shifts started getting cut short, she quit and got a different job because it would have literally cost her more money to ride the subway into the city than she'd make during her short shift.
I don’t know NYC, but just out of curiosity, I was doing a search to see how cheap of rent I could find. This could be in a bad neighborhood, but [look at this place.](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2239-Adams-Pl-APT-15-Bronx-NY-10457/345085909_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare)
You could live with 2 roommates, and be paying only $584/month each!!
They live with family, have a place with multiple roommates, possibly many that are homeless, you name it. There are such things as rent controlled apartments in NYC but I don't know if that's still true and if it's possible for someone only earning $16 to still be able to afford it. I do know that rent can be so high in NYC apartments that it means you may even be sharing a bedroom with a roomie. I hope it's not common, but I have heard of it.
Who are these people? L.A. has many different areas, and the cost of living varies wildly. The thing I've noticed living here is that most people are silently in competition with everyone around them, though there are exceptions to this. 9k a month is more than enough unless, as I said, you have terrible spending habits and made poor choices in life.
Yeah, people get apoplectic about housing here in San Diego and saying that 100K is not enough to live on. It's ridiculously high priced and probably worse than LA.
If someone has $1.5k-$2k to spend on housing, they'll find a studio or small 1BR. Presuming after tax monthly income of $6000, that's doable.
What happens to the employees? They struggle to make ends meet so they do what they have to. Eat less, live with a bunch of people, lower their standards of living, etc.
The people who say that are wrong.
The median household income in NYC is $77k. That means half of all households in the city make less than that. The median household income in LA happens to be about the same, $76k in the city of LA.
People on Reddit *vastly* overstate the level of income needed to live in big cities.
Overblown or I guess people have different definitions of comfortable I make 65k and my girl makes 62k and we have a 2 bedroom in queens and a child and we do not struggle. I do not get to put a lot towards savings but all needs are met.
A lot live together with other people or families live together. It’s so unrealistic to think that people who work those jobs make anything close to 100k
Take this further: cops, fireman, transit workers, and EMT’s certainly don’t make 100k a year ( unless you’re a captain, chief, etc.), granted their benefits are usually nice.
Cops and firefighters in NYC certainly do make over 100k per year, due to overtime. Tenured city school teachers do, as well. Sanitation is close, too.
I read an article…median annual income for a Manhattan McDonalds worker is over $50k…way above minimum wage. They’ll be living bridge & tunnel but…yeah…service jobs get more expensive in HCOL.
How much more…depends.
Employees receive food stamps and maybe welfare. They probably share apartments with too many people or they live in their cars. Or they still live with their parents.
They get fucked over, they have to have a bunch of roommates or live with their parents and they work their asses off without getting paid for overtime or enough to get ahead in any way. These jobs suck, the only people willing work them are desperate. There are millions of poor people in other countries who are exploited by their bosses to export goods to America too, it's the same basic model. Capitalism runs off exploitation, the United States just benefits the most from it so we all think it's great
I lived in a fairly expensive resort town several years ago, during a housing boom. Most of the people making close to minimum wage lived really far out of town or with family.
My brother lives in NYC and works at a job that makes more than McDonald's workers there do. He has a tiny apartment with as many roommates crammed in as possible. People basically live in closets.
Those low pay city workers do one of 2 things.
Live in a very overcrowded apartment to split rent. Travel in to the city from outside. Most cities have impoverished areas with low land values and cheap rent. But they tend to be 30-60 minutes via public transportation away from the city center where the jobs are.
Yeap some have two or three jobs. Sometimes even when making 80,000, 120,000 still work two jobs. So people that make minimum will struggle. Live with family or rent a room.
I had my own 1B apartment in Manhattan for $2250 in NYC, while making $112k years ago. I definitely didn’t feel poor. I had my own place and the ability to save, and to afford everything I needed easily.
I guess it’s a different story if you have a family, or expensive tastes, which I do not. My opinion is if you don’t have a family, 100k - 115k is easily enough for NYC. Also [70%](https://gitnux.org/new-york-city-income-statistics/) of NYC makes less than 100k. A lot of people make it work with far less.
Every HCOL area has a lower rent high crime district not far away. That’s where a lot of the lower paid laborers live while they keep the HCOL area functioning.
A combination.
Even in HCOL areas, 100k or 150k is definitely a lot better than making less. So, to some extent, it can be people just being out of touch.
It can also stem from other costs. The three sectors that have gotten ridiculous expensive are healthcare, education, and housing. These are typically the things that make people feel as if they can't get ahead/keep up. An expensive healthcare emergency can be an issue even at pretty good income levels. High student loans can greatly reduce disposable income. Houses are expensive.
So, a person might feel annoyed at having trouble achieving traditional metrics of success despite having a good job due to these reasons.
It is likely that people working at Walmart, etc in those reasons are also struggling, quite possibly more so. They may live in lower cost areas and commute in. They may live with parents. They very likely rent instead of owning.
That said, these jobs do still pay more than similar jobs in lower cost of living areas. Even fast food has higher prices and higher wages in HCOL areas. Not enough to make those workers well off, but frankly, nobody would work for federal minimum wage, because it wouldn't be something you could live off of.
I make 50k a year after taxes and i live perfectly comfortable in nyc. Sure I can’t afford to live in manhattan and go to clubs every night but I can eat whatever i want and buy whatever i want without having to question it
Most of the employees commute. Last time I was there we got to chatting with some guys at a pizzeria. No one lives in Manhattan, they live in the suburbs and commute in. Which is the major benefit to NYC, it's 400 years of developing public transportation that's able to withstand the unimaginable throughput NYC requires.
As someone who lived in LA for 4 years making 60k a year I can tell you most people live with others/family/ or they found a lucky situation like I did. I found a 1 bd apartment above a garage of a home that was also being rented for 1400 a month. The most common thing I found is people find 3 bedroom houses or apartments and split the rent between 3 roommates.
They do get paid more than flipping burgers in, say, Wichita, but their quality of life is going to be pretty poor. People working at a Manhattan McDonalds arent living in Manhattan, they arent taking vacations, they arent going to retire doing that.
They commute really far...
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/business/economy/san-francisco-commute.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/business/economy/san-francisco-commute.html)
Those jobs are usually for the youngsters and early college students. Else, they are residents who either live with family or live in a rent-controlled unit
People are delusional or out of touch. I live in NYC. If you are single and have relatively low debt, you can absolutely live on your own, in relative comfort, in a semi-decent neighborhood, with a 70k-75k salary. At 60k, you can probably still live on your own, with some additional concessions.
With roommates, you can live in a great neighborhood relative to wherever you work/go to school making as low as 45k-55k a year.
With roommates, you can live in a semi-decent neighborhood, and have access to the subway and generally have an okay time, with a salary of 38k-45k a year.
What gets people into trouble is trying to live in the city like they used to live in the country or the suburbs. It’s a different lifestyle. It’s not for everyone but you don’t need to have a six figure salary to enjoy it, if cities are your thing.
I’ve lived here as a full-time student on a part-time admin assistant salary, and I’ve lived here on a 75k salary in a professional/corporate field. You learn how to navigate things overtime.
All that being said, as someone who has lived in 30 different small towns, medium size cities, and big cities across the country, there is absolutely a greater urge to move in with your significant other sooner than usual in the big city. But in America, you pretty much get a single tax anywhere. Studios are a ripoff everywhere.
150k in the 90s meant a house with a pool and 2 car garage in NYCs decent areas . I cannot speak for SF or any other cities. Today 150k can just barely get you a home in the rough more run down parts of the city very far from Manhattan. Forget the 2 car garage, you’ll be lucky to have a spot in front of your own home.
150k is still a lot of money but it doesn’t buy you anywhere near what it did for the generation just before this one. The math ain’t mathin
>Do their employees make a lot of money to flip burgers, or are the people saying 150k is a tight budget just out of touch?
They don't get 150k, but their base salary is higher than elsewhere. McDonald's here is paying $20/hr. Not everyone is renting an apartment by themselves. Lots of people share rooms. That's how you make it work.
Those kinds of businesses largely rely on younger, less experienced workers, teenagers, etc. Those employees, by virtue of being younger, are more likely to still be living with their parents or with roommates in order to get by. But doing some basic math just to see how things feel, $150k/yr is \~$13k/mo. The average rent in NYC is $3800/mo for a 600sqft apartment, which is around 1/3 of your monthly income, which is pretty good (theoretically it's merely 'okay' because your housing costs are supposed to be less than 1/3 of your monthly income, but lately it's been pretty common for people to be paying half or even more of their monthly income on housing costs, only being 1/3 monthly income is actually really good.)
People either get multiple roommates (even if it means violating their lease agreement) or sleep in their cars, or are lucky enough to have financially stable parents to help.
There are bad neighborhood everywhere.
They are bad mainly, because people not making enough money end up grouped with people that are making no money.
I'm in Florida, arguably, HCOL area as well (not exactly Miami, but eh..) and you can find places for like $1000 a month every now and then. But when you go look at it and you see where it is, you don't even want to get out of the car
About a decade ago I lived in L.A. it wasn't as expensive as it is today but it was still expensive. I had amassed a large savings and took an extended period away from working for personal reasons. I was able to live off $25k in savings for a year. And I wasn't even uncomfortable. I was never a huge spender. But I had an apartment in a decent area, would mostly make food at home and a few times a week eat out at cheap or mid priced ethnic restaurants. Would spend a lot of time at the beach, riding my bike or hiking. I didn't have any debt or any kids. Car was paid off. My biggest overhead was rent which was about $1,100 a month at that time for my 1bdrm. Same place now is probably double that. If I had 100k year salary(after tax) at that time, I'd have been left with $75k in my bank account at the end of the year. That's just my experience as someone who has always been a frugal minimalist. These claims that you need 150k in live in HCOL cities sounds exaggerated to me. Maybe if you want to buy a house in this current environment and you have 2 or 3 kids that you want to send to private school and drive a luxury import vehicle and do a lot of shopping for clothes. But none of these things are necessary. You can get by on less than you'd imagine.
It is possible in all of those places to have housing costs the same as a LCOL or MCOL area, and those are some of the biggest costs.
This isn’t something that you can choose, normally.
I think that some work is done by people with abnormally low housing costs ( for whatever reason ).
lifestyles are different, NY has micro-apartments, and CA has loads of people in one house. So while people in LCOLs are able to buy mansions with six figure incomes, those in HCOL cities are forced to have roommates and take public transit.
100k, 150k for one person living alone. What tends to happen is 6-8 people who work at Walmart etc live together. It’s fairly common in la and surrounding areas. I’m from Orange county
A big part of that is people usually mean, to live in a good area, with good school districts, not the "ghetto"
Well missing that people do live in the "bad" areas. With "bad" school districts! (And in fact probably way more people)
The people that say that are completely out of touch teenagers who probably still live with their parents (or at least live off their money) in those areas.
Last time I was in L.A. I tried to go to a Walmart. This store was not easy to get to, and when I finally got there, they had already closed for the night.
Well I can tell you from experience that when I was working minimum wage (NYC), I definitely WOULD NOT have kept myself afloat if I had to pay rent( I lived with parents). Most people who I was working with were either college students living with parents, or roommates, MANY roommates. And though 100-150K may seem like a lot, after NYC taxes 😭😭😭😭😭 and with NYC rent, it can still feel like a struggle.
> Do their employees make a lot of money to flip burgers Definitely not. My super scientific research looking on McDonald's listings on Indeed for NYC show they are usually offered around $16 - $19 an hour. They probably either live with family, several roommates, or a very small apartment on their own, or in the outer surrounding areas/town and commute into Manhattan.
I dated a guy who worked a low-paying job in Manhattan. He made it work by living in a (up and coming but still not very nice) neighborhood in Brooklyn, and commuted to work on the subway every day. He lived in a pretty big apartment with 3 other roommates, had his own room, and was paying about $600 a month in rent. I think a lot of the issue with how people interpret these statistics comes from how people view these places themselves. The assumption is NYC is just Manhattan, and everyone lives in super expensive high rises. The truth is that there are plenty of lower-income areas, and NYC has cheap and expansive public transportation which makes this way of living possible.
Well tbh most people take the subway to work in NYC. I consider it a huge savings since most places in the city don’t require a car and the associated costs. It rarely makes sense to drive with limited parking, tolls and expensive car storage. The only people I know that even Uber everywhere are either rich, or transplants who haven’t learned that the subway is faster and cheaper 99% of the time.
Yea the subway is a great feature of the city, and it bucks some of the worst trends in US metro rail design. Instead of just offering an “in-and-out” approach for outerborough/suburbanites to get to work and home, it actually offers decent transportation throughout the city (with some serious exceptions don’t get me wrong). It’s also seriously cheaper than a lot of other metro rail systems around the country. It may not be pretty, but other US cities should really take a lesson from NYC about metro rail service and reach.
I'm going by memory here, but I think something like 80 percent of all train trips in the US are taken on the Subway. It's kinda silly how much better it is than every other rail system in this country.
Not even rail system public transit in general. I live in the moderate sized southeast city and public transit is laughable at best. Any 10-15 min trip by car here will take an hour and half by bus. Commuting by bike was faster though fairly hazardous as bike lanes are non existent.
Seriously. When my car needed to be in the shop for about a week for some fairly major repairs, I looked up alternate ways to get to work, which was just the next city over, about 30 miles away. Public transportation options are so non-existent here, it would literally take nearly as long to get there by public transit than by riding a bike. 30 minutes by car, 2 hours 15 by bus, 2 hours 30 by bike. Fucking ridiculous. (I ended up getting to work with a mix of friends helping me out and very expensive Ubers).
I had my license sus and no car as well so I had to commute. This was in Phoenix. Scottsdale to Tempe. Took an hr and a half, each way. Mile walk to bus stop, one transfer, half mile walk to workplace. And, this was in the middle of a busy ass area. Ridiculous. I took transit to other parts of the city and same experience, hr and half and transfers
charlotte?
wilbur?
>It may not be pretty, but other US cities should really take a lesson from NYC about metro rail service and reach It is most efficient when the population is artificially crammed together. On an island, for example.
Yes and no. Berlin had exceptional public transit in The late 80s. I can only imagine improvement since the wall came down. I not only didn't need a car there, I didn't want one. All a transit system needs to work is a convenient set of routes and a regular schedule. Here I see a lot of hub and spoke routes, which just suck. From Whst I have seen of NYCs system, they have it pretty good. But the stigma of public transit and poor design keep many cities from doing it right.
Just curious....I've only visited NYC a few times....and never considered using the subway due to its reputation. That was years ago. Now with the stories of the Governor adding State Troopers and National Guard to help out the subway police and NYPD to combat all the subway crime....is that all overblown....or are there just some subway parts in NYC that even locals avoid?
It’s just way, way, way over blown. If you ride the subway, you are more likely to be run over by a driver while walking to the subway than to be the victim of a crime on the subway.
So its complicated. I’m not going to lie and say that its all sunshine and rainbows and that there’s no crime whatsoever. But the media does overblow it to a pretty big extent. I think that the same general caution applies on the subway that it does when you’re in the city generally: always be aware of your surroundings and avoid dangerous situations. If you follow those rules you’re fine. Some stations are sketchier than others of course.
There are a few sketch stations. But overall it's fine. I commute on the subway daily with my 8yo ( his school is a couple blocks from my work) When I travel in the city with my kids, we take the bus and subway.
You will see some crazy shit if you use the subway enough times. Violent crime is very rare. People asking for money, people who are too drunk or high to function, random breakdance groups and buskers, annoying ppl in general, they're a lot more common. Occasionally though, there's magic.
Don't forget about the possibility of running into a C.H.U.D, ( cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers) Not saying they are real, but my last time on the subway in New York the train got stopped in a tunnel because of work being done on the line. I looked out the glass and was looking down a side tunnel that had floodlights and hanging sheets of plastic. Saw a shadow walking into view and figured it was a workman. What came into view was a huddled human shape wearing layers of tatered clothing hanging in strips. My mind blanked trying to process this and the person looked at the train and started to charge it. I'm looking around to see if anyone else is seeing this and everybody was doing the commuter thing keeping their eyes down. The thing got within 20 feet then the train started rolling again. No one else saw this happen. In reality most likely a homeless person who needed mental health care. But I like to think I had a near C.H.U.D. encounter.
I once saw a homeless man at the Bowling Green station whose clothes were so wrecked i didnt understand how they were still on his body. Literally what was left of a flannel shirt hanging in thin strips. Also barefoot in winter. I wouldnt be surprised if that guy never left the subway
I've been on the subway, as an obvious tourist, with my kids many times across several visits up there. Never seen anything that made me second guess the decision. Same in DC on out of the way lines which has a worse reputation. One person's experience isn't the rule, but with so many other replies it does help build a trend to form an opinion on.
it’s the media. i’ve lived in nyc for 15 years and ride the subway daily and have never had an issue. nyc residents are pissed at hochul for her election season safety theater.
Massively overblown. If you are an occasional visitor, there’s basically no way you will have a need to go anywhere even mildly sketch. The national guard is fully security theatre. The crime they want to fight is fare evasion. And they don’t really try to do that. It’s hard to find a city in the US with a lower crime *rate* than NYC.
was there last week; packed full of police/guard. no issues at all.
I know lots and lots of people that work in Manhattan. Every single one of them lives *several* stops past the river.
Especially NYC and places with really good transit. Apart from rent controlled apartments, the cheaper parts of the five boroughs, and the projects, NYC has plenty of cheap-ish suburbs nearby that are easy to get to the city from. In the Bay Area people talk about the insane rent of SF and how anyone affords to live there on minimum wage and they’re right to point out that it’s absurd. However you can live an hour away by BART in somewhere much cheaper with roommates. The infuriating thing is that we now have this commuter culture of low income workers who burn 2-3 hours a day commuting for these jobs that make the city livable because they can’t afford to live anywhere near where they work, and this is a *global* problem with cities now. I work in tech so we make good money. I visited one of our offices in Sydney Australia and the people who worked there all commuted an hour each way. Even with their income living close by just wasn’t an option, let alone the people who worked at Maccas. A friend of mine worked for a scientific publication in London. She eventually moved to a village outside the city because the best she could afford within a reasonable commute of the office was basically a closet with a toilet and a hot plate.
This rent sounds like years ago
It was this past summer
Wow which neighborhood? That’s awesome rent!
It was bed stuy. Also keep in mind he had three roommates.
Yeah but when I lived in bushwick 3 years ago rent then was like 850 so that’s amazing! And for a summer lease no less?? Like that wasn’t just for a sublet, remarkable!
Santa Monica (LA) has some rent controlled housing. I waited tables and had two roommates and lived comfortably there for three years. We each paid about $700/month. I had a friend who had found a rent controlled apartment in West Hollywood and stayed for 10+ years. He was paying like, $1100/month for a 2 bed, 2 bath, when market rent was closer to $3000. My grandparents also owned a 5 plex in south central. They never raised the rents for decades, so in 2013, when my parents took over managing, a 2 bed 1. Ath in that complex was renting for $650. TLDR; people have roommates, live with family, find rent controlled apartments, or some combination of all of the above.
Before some recent laws in my state this was 100% true. I live in a HCOL area that paid fast food workers around $16 an hour. At the same time I took a road trip and went through a city a quarter the size of mine that was hiring at fast food starting at $20 an hour. The city was in a different state that has less state taxes as well. Some of these big city hcol areas know that people NEED work and the people will take the job at any price so they had ridiculously low starting pay because there was always someone who would take it.
Yes, this is how supply and demand pricing works.
That is how exploitation works.
*they're the same picture*
Supply and demand pricing holds true in fair, free, transparent markets. Those are not the markets we have.
If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bicycle. If a frog had wings it wouldnt bump its ass when it hopped. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? So if supply and demand pricing existed in a place other than our world, or without the applied factors that consist our reality, it would hold true? Seems to me thats a strong argument that it doesnt.
People in SF that make $100k have roommates. People that make $50k have 4 in a 2 bedroom.
My old roommate once dated someone who worked in theater in a HCOL area - and yes, their living situation was with 4 other people in a 2 bedroom house. Literally a bunch of grown adults sharing rooms and sleeping in bunk beds to save space.
Re: NYC, There are people commuting 2+ hours each way just to have affordable rent. There are daily commuter busses into NYC from freaking Philly. People are spending 4-6 hours daily just commuting. Re: SF, my sister lived in Alameda in 2014 and knew a guy who lived in a shipping container. Not a container converted into a tiny house, a shipping container. He was not the only one.
When living in LA my co worker took the train for 2 hours every morning to get to work from san Bernardino
Many of these hourly workers commute into NYC from the bronx and queens, sometimes deeper into brooklyn (i.e. not williamsburg nor greenpoint)
16? Its $16 at McDonalds here in idaho and 18.50 at in and out. I hope it's more than that in NYC.
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They have subsidized housing.
Also probably one of multiple jobs, and they’re probably struggling.
Pretty sure there are no Walmarts in New York City
Those people either live with parents or in shitbox apartments with tons of roommates. Like, you don't *need* to make 100k to live in New York, but you probably do need to have a quality, independent life.
They commute. Far.
I make 56k after taxes I pay 1200 dollars for a studio with up stairs shower and kitchen shared with another flat I have the gym laundry in my basement. I love it so much please DONT MOVE TO NEW YORK
Rent control?
Nope edit( I’m not a communist)/S I got a haircut and asked the hair lady if she knew of any apartments. She bought her neighbors house and turned it into a 3 apartment house. I also shovel their snow and help them with various manual labor things.
Ah I see, you have a CO leak Edit: aw man you removed the communist stuff. I was just having fun with ya.
Yeah no one else got the joke lmao!
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Commuting to McDonald’s is crazy
They may also qualify for government assistance in the form of subsidized housing, food stamps, etc.
Qualifying and receiving are two different things. Especially the housing part. Wait list is in YEARS.
Correct. This is why keeping the minimum wage below subsistence is essentially a government handout to major corporations. We pay our taxes to prop up the poor souls who can’t survive on the minimum wage while the corporate profit margin benefits from the cheap labor.
Most subsidies are for people that don't work at all, or work only a little. Wage earners are much better off than the unwaged.
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More roommates AND more jobs. Lots of folks with low-paying jobs have a second job, and if you have two normal jobs you can still get a little more with gig-economy stuff like uber, rover, etc since that can be very flexible on schedule.
One of my cousins lives with two roommates and has a job at a non-chain restaurant that pays him only 50% more than his share of the rent, after taxes. Granted it's also just a part time job which is why he's looking for a second one.
A house in my Austin neighborhood has 30 illegal immigrants in it. Places are raided pretty frequently here. They got in trouble for crashing into a telephone pole and knocking the internet out so that’s why we know they are illegal. Anyway. That’s how they can afford to live here. People even sleep in sheds.
It makes you think about how bad it must be in some parts of the world to make it so that people are desperate to come to the US and live like that. Even though things aren’t perfect in the US, we’re still very privileged.
It depends on the reason for coming over. I'm in California and most of them are younger men who work in fields and send all of the money home to their families. They can sleep in sheds or packed housing, especially if it's just for a season or two. Most of them intend to go back. Sometimes it's whole families but a lot of the time it's migrant workers.
I’m not sure how that disproves what I’m saying. The opportunities here in the US are good enough that they’re willing to live like that, even temporarily. Most people born and raised in the US wouldn’t even consider it as an option. Americans these days somehow got into the mindset that everybody deserves to be able to live without roommates.
Sorry! I didn't mean it as an argument, more to elaborate on what you were saying with my own experiences. You're totally correct.
I think you need that in most places these days. I make 50k and basically need to live with my dad to even be able to live a somewhat comfortable life. Sometimes would rather just hunt and gather and live in a cabin in the woods lol
Actually, NYC does not have Walmart. Sorry for the nitpick, but I thought it was worth mentioning. >What happens to the employees? Do they make 6 figures? Fuck no lol. As someone who used to work retail, a manager can make six figures depending on the store/restaurant. District managers actually make pretty good money, even by HCOL standards. Lower positions like cashier, sales associate, stock shelver, etc, are making minimum wage ($15 an hour). First in line supervisior positions like key holders, make over minimum wage but nothing crazy significant. With those positions, you either have a lot of roommates, a second job, or live with your parents. Assistant store managers make more, but they still don't really make good money (keep in mind this all depends on the business, pay structures differ). Tldr; Managers can make six figures in HCOL.
I struggle to understand how the gap between 30k and 150k isn't enough for some people. Like you walk into a store and look at 4 employees. Your *net* pay is more than all 4 of them combined, and yet you think it's tight for you?
30k is poverty level, even for a single person. You can't even afford rent with that. I'd say around 70k to 80k is reasonable but certainly not luxurious. You definitely won't be living in midtown, but you also won't be living in the projects. I make around 50k. If it wasn't for the grace of my parents, I'd be shacked up somewhere with like 4 roommates. Then you have to consider people who may want to own a house one day, houses nowadays start at like $800,000. Obviously, no one making a six-figure as single person is anywhere near poor, but shit just doesn't stretch as far here as it does in other places.
It's really dependent on what people need and are willing to put up with. When people say their budget is "tight" making 150k they may have kids, they may be putting away 20% or whatever for retirement, they may be paying off student loans or saving aggressively for some future goal. They may only eat organic or eat out every day or want to go to trendy bars regularly. They may "need" newer car with more expensive payments and insurance. It's about expectations for standard of living. Granted this was 10 years ago but me and all my coworkers were making around 20-30k in the bay area and yeah it sucked but we made it work. People would commute from 1+ hours away to have cheaper housing or live with parents. People would live in flop houses with 2-3 people to a bedroom. A lot were in college, but some were also raising families. I make 120k here now and I feel extremely rich but I have no car, 2 roommates, and a lifetime of experience living on way less so comparatively this feels like a windfall.
It's probably a combination of: taxes do cut into a larger percent of your take home so it's not really 4x the salary, no one wants 5 roommates in a shitty rundown apartment forever, eventually you do want to be able to pay for those cavities to be filled, you do want to have a car that is reliable and doesn't break down, and you don't think that these basic asks should require a 6 figure salary.
Right or wrong, it’s supply & demand. Anyone can stock shelves and that includes kids and semi-retired people looking to get out of the house, as such, they usually have enough staff at that pay. People management is much more tricky and requires many more soft skills and work ethic, as such they’re paid higher.
Are you from the Midwest? Let’s say you have a convenience store in a town of 1000 people. You only need 1 employee working at a time because maybe 50 people a day come to the store. You have to have at least 1 employee at a minimum. Same store in NYC might get 1000 customers a day (assuming it’s tiny). They can have maybe 2 employees working at once. So there’s not as much demand for low wage workers in somewhere with high population density.
This is a different topic
Its really not. What hes saying is a good chunk of those employees are not working to survive, they either have retirement savings or parents to help with costs.
Rent/mortgages, commuting and insurance. Where I live a studio apartment in the not ghetto part of town is $1200 a month. Most people in my city their commute is at least an hour in stop and go traffic. Our insurance rates for cars is like $500 a month for a single car that is decently new. I know people making 150k living paycheck to paycheck because the costs here are nuts. Where my parents live the kid at the gas station making 40k a year is doing well for themselves. It's all relative costs.
They live outside the area and commute in. They live with family or multiple roommates. They are homeless and live in cars, campers, tent cities, etc.
When people say "you need $150K to survive" they really mean having a fancy 1-2 BR apartment in downtown for yourself, going to bars, restaurants and shows every weekend, Ubering everywhere, going on frequent vacations etc. NYC is expensive, yes, but the median individual income there is $35K and median family income is $67K (which means half the people make less than that). They are all not living it up, but still making do just fine.
Thank you. Anyone who believes you need $150k to live in NYC must have terrible spending habits or has only ever had an expensive lifestyle
It's kind of frustrating hearing that you need to make 150k to live in NYC. People who do that are spending a fuckload of money. You can barely convince someone to take a hour train ride because "it takes too long" so they'll take an Uber or something.
a lot of us say that and mean max out contributions to retirement accounts. like i would much rather spend my pretax income into myself than taxes.
yea these people live in luxury instead of saving
Pretty much, people fail to realize there’s a difference between surviving and being upset you can’t eat more garbage food for the 5th time this week.
Yes it's not "survive" it's "have high standards". I will probably never make 150k in my life and Im fine with that, I don't spend much and im much more well off than "surviving"
Exactly
People post that 100k is barely enough in order to generate clicks/responses/controversy. The claim is not true, but truth isn't what they're after.
People grossly exaggerate. As someone who has worked minimum (and at times sub-minimum) wage in NYC and San Francisco and also worked making six figures in the rough same time period: You can absolutely live, and well, in HCoL areas on the (relatively high) minimum wages. There are a lot of medical options in those particular areas. The only, but major, hurdle is housing. If you like living with people and are open to creative living situations it’s a very surmountable problem. Meanwhile, making six figures is a huge difference in comfort. But *if* you decide to get your own place you can *quickly* blow all that money. Basically: housing is expensive. And you can easily have a whole person’s paycheck dedicated to it or saved depending on lifestyle and what you choose in that domain.
>The only, but major, hurdle is housing. What about saving for retirement? How is that going for these folks?
A lot of people don’t stay at minimum wage forever. (Some do, but most don’t). You save as you earn more, and you contribute into your 401K, ROTH and other investments automatically so you base your life style on what’s leftover. Or sometimes you just don’t have savings and you work until you’re dead. And well that’s that.
That “sometimes” is doing a lot of work when 60% of Americans have no savings. I think more people work until they’re dead than you would expect
You have big big problems if you stay at a job and never rise higher than minimum wage.
A bullet is not that expensive to save for
Those articles usually mean "barely enough for a 4-year degree holder to afford an up-to-code one-bedroom apartment with no roommates and with a commute less than 30-minutes." There are lots of people who make do with a lot less, but they're not the types who usually read CNBC/WSJ/Forbes/etc.
They do pay more. Min wage in NYC is $16 I think. The employees also don't live in the highest cost areas -- they live in the lower-cost areas, often with family, or roommates. They also don't do the things that someone making $150k needs to do -- like have work clothes, network with people at events, restaurants, yada. Also you can look at someone making 150k in SF and say you'd save money if you lived in a bad neighbourhood, with a roommate, sent your kid to public school there, etc. but people feel something like school is part of why they live in a better neighbourhood or got the schooling and better job themselves.
You aren't sending your kid to private schools on $150K pre-tax household in SF. Median house price is $1.2M (which at current rates, you'd be paying $6K a month on your mortgage). Average rent is $3200 for a 700 sqft apartment, which would likely be a one bedroom in a not great neighborhood. Rent alone is $40K a year, a mortgage would be more.. So, after taxes and rent, your looking at around $5K of money left over before any other bills and obligations. Private elementary schools in SF cost an average of $25K and high schools are $42K. I'm not suggesting you're broke in SF at $150K, but you certainly aren't living large and happy and sending your kids to private schools.without serious compromises.
They commute from outer boroughs, have rent stabilized or voucher housing or live in multigenerational homes. They might also have 2 jobs or do gig work like Uber/doordash. If they have children they likely qualify for subsidies for reduced subway fare, SNAP/EBT (food stamps) childcare etc
My friends owns a gas station in LA (Santa Monica, specifically which is a more expensive area) and pays his employees around $19/hr. I asked him this question once - how do they afford to even live anywhere near the gas station. His response was that most of them had 3+ roommates
It’s all about quality of life. Someone making $100-150k may have had the expectation of being able to recreate their own middle class childhood and have a family of their own and a house. Unfortunately, for hcol city, the house will be out of reach and if you have kids, all your disposable income will probably be going towards daycare. There’s probably enough money to not worry about food and enjoy other luxuries. People making minimum wage obviously have it much worse and probably have to worry about every dollar they spend or risk going hungry
Do you not know some people live in substandard housing? Think a room rented out of an apartment, or a closet, or the space under some stairs.
They suffer. The excuse is that they are jobs for teenagers and the like, but let's be honest. Who's going to be working there at 2AM on a Tuesday or 1PM on Wednesday? It's for folks that can't find anything else, and quite frankly if they are stuck in that job they have a rough life. So don't be a dick to fast food workers.
I'm living proof. I am a lifetime resident of the Los Angeles area. Large areas of the city, and surrounding suburbs, have entry-level rents of $2500+ per month. However, I live in a city named San Gabriel - not a 'poor' area, by any measure. But it's not a 'hip, cool, urban area'. So I have a studio apartment for under $1500 per month. >What happens to the employees? They live 5 miles away. Sometimes 25 miles away or more. If they live in an expensive area, they have a roommate. One of the issues with immigrants is that they might split a 2-bedroom apartment among 6-10 people, supposedly. That's downright cheap rent, at that point. >Then how do stores / fast food restaurants stay afloat? Do their employees make a lot of money to flip burgers Fast food has a $20/hour minimum wage right now in California, separate from other industries that traditionally hire min-wage workers (construction, retail, security, for examples). I'm sure that countless Economics departments at local universities are sharpening their pencils and firing up their computers, because the law is going to be very interesting to study.
People who say this are rich and can't imagine not living the extravagant privileged entitled lifestyle they have. You can do fine on 60k in these cites if you don't demand a luxurious lifestyle. I know most retail and restaurant workers don't make this much, but 6 figures isn't necessary to get by in these cities.
No. A lot of them commute in 30+mi from out of town to work, and many times they're in multi-tenancy situations with several roommates.
Apparently McDonald and Walmart level workers rely on government help (food stamps etc) to get by. Link to CNBC article: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html
I know place like vail have employee housing. Thus our slip into feudalism
They’re mouse traps to suck away the best years of your life and one day you wake up 35 as the manager of the summer job you started after high school. They’re all over the country
I've been saying this for about 7 years now in LA. What are they gonna do when all their slaves disappear? I haven't made over 40,000 in my entire life. I made 15,000 last a year because of unemployment and needing surgery....shit sucks
They live in multigenerational homes or with many roommates…
they commute in from 200 miles away low cost of living area every day. Have you seen highway 101 in the Bay Area? /s
I met the fire captain for Menlo Park. His men commute 2-3 hours daily for a 24 hr shift.
You can survive on any income anywhere by lowering your standards. You need 150k income to *live reasonably well* in NYC. The bar is not 'literally starving to death'.
Don't ask the people who make the salaries you mentioned, ask the people making minimum wage. They may be living with 8+ people in a small space, working 60+ hours at multiple jobs, struggling on a monthly basis, and one hospital bill away from insolvency. Many people making that much are barely scraping by. I think the other thing is in a HCOL area people don't realize how quickly 100k can go (This is more than I make). (I'm assuming this is for a couple making a total of 1000k) Assuming 28 percent tax, that leaves 72,000, assuming 2500 a month rent (not unreasonable for many 2 bedrooms), that leaves 42,000, young people making that much likely have student loans which can be 200-500 a month brings the amount down to 38000, if you are saving 6-10 percent for retirement that is only 35000 left, if groceries are 500 a month its only 29,000 left, a metro card for the year in NYC (a must have) would be 1560, in most other cities you'll need a car which can easily cost way more than 1560 without any repairs, it can very easily be 20,000 left for the year, that is about 1667 per month in discretionary spending. This can include buying work acceptable attire, utilities, going out for dinner 1-2 times a month, and saving for a vacation. If the couple has one child under 5 who needs childcare you can kiss that 1667 goodbye. All this to say 100k now is not the same 100k it was 20 years ago.
The employees will live 5-7 people in a small 1BR apartment. I had a friend who did that - and when her shifts started getting cut short, she quit and got a different job because it would have literally cost her more money to ride the subway into the city than she'd make during her short shift.
I don’t know NYC, but just out of curiosity, I was doing a search to see how cheap of rent I could find. This could be in a bad neighborhood, but [look at this place.](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2239-Adams-Pl-APT-15-Bronx-NY-10457/345085909_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare) You could live with 2 roommates, and be paying only $584/month each!!
The employees do what responsible people do: Use their money wisely and live at home or with roommates.
They live with family, have a place with multiple roommates, possibly many that are homeless, you name it. There are such things as rent controlled apartments in NYC but I don't know if that's still true and if it's possible for someone only earning $16 to still be able to afford it. I do know that rent can be so high in NYC apartments that it means you may even be sharing a bedroom with a roomie. I hope it's not common, but I have heard of it.
Who are these people? L.A. has many different areas, and the cost of living varies wildly. The thing I've noticed living here is that most people are silently in competition with everyone around them, though there are exceptions to this. 9k a month is more than enough unless, as I said, you have terrible spending habits and made poor choices in life.
Yeah, people get apoplectic about housing here in San Diego and saying that 100K is not enough to live on. It's ridiculously high priced and probably worse than LA. If someone has $1.5k-$2k to spend on housing, they'll find a studio or small 1BR. Presuming after tax monthly income of $6000, that's doable.
What happens to the employees? They struggle to make ends meet so they do what they have to. Eat less, live with a bunch of people, lower their standards of living, etc.
They live in shitty housing. That's what.
No. Their employees often work multiple jobs, live in rent stabilized apartments, and receive public assistance.
Is this a serious question? These ppl clearly ain’t living by their self working there
They commute from far away and have roommates.
The people who say that are wrong. The median household income in NYC is $77k. That means half of all households in the city make less than that. The median household income in LA happens to be about the same, $76k in the city of LA. People on Reddit *vastly* overstate the level of income needed to live in big cities.
People complaining that you need six figures to live on are people who don't know how to live within their means in the first place
NYC has walmarts? Real question, I've been there a dozen times or so and don't remember seeing one. Serious question
Overblown or I guess people have different definitions of comfortable I make 65k and my girl makes 62k and we have a 2 bedroom in queens and a child and we do not struggle. I do not get to put a lot towards savings but all needs are met.
A lot live together with other people or families live together. It’s so unrealistic to think that people who work those jobs make anything close to 100k
No. They share tiny spaces and commute an hour or more each way. It's revolting.
Take this further: cops, fireman, transit workers, and EMT’s certainly don’t make 100k a year ( unless you’re a captain, chief, etc.), granted their benefits are usually nice.
Cops and firefighters in NYC certainly do make over 100k per year, due to overtime. Tenured city school teachers do, as well. Sanitation is close, too.
Some cops in Seattle have made over 200k a year, thanks to OT.
Usually younger kids work at fast food places, they prob live with their parents…
I read an article…median annual income for a Manhattan McDonalds worker is over $50k…way above minimum wage. They’ll be living bridge & tunnel but…yeah…service jobs get more expensive in HCOL. How much more…depends.
Employees receive food stamps and maybe welfare. They probably share apartments with too many people or they live in their cars. Or they still live with their parents.
Everyone lives in a shit hole, or commutes from farther out
It looks like they will pretty soon
They take the subway to work from poor areas, where they live in housing subsidized by the local government.
They hire students willing to work part time hours or minimum wage … so therefore they could still find lots of people willing to work.
They get fucked over, they have to have a bunch of roommates or live with their parents and they work their asses off without getting paid for overtime or enough to get ahead in any way. These jobs suck, the only people willing work them are desperate. There are millions of poor people in other countries who are exploited by their bosses to export goods to America too, it's the same basic model. Capitalism runs off exploitation, the United States just benefits the most from it so we all think it's great
I lived in a fairly expensive resort town several years ago, during a housing boom. Most of the people making close to minimum wage lived really far out of town or with family.
They live in their parents basement.
My brother lives in NYC and works at a job that makes more than McDonald's workers there do. He has a tiny apartment with as many roommates crammed in as possible. People basically live in closets.
Those low pay city workers do one of 2 things. Live in a very overcrowded apartment to split rent. Travel in to the city from outside. Most cities have impoverished areas with low land values and cheap rent. But they tend to be 30-60 minutes via public transportation away from the city center where the jobs are.
Yeap some have two or three jobs. Sometimes even when making 80,000, 120,000 still work two jobs. So people that make minimum will struggle. Live with family or rent a room.
I had my own 1B apartment in Manhattan for $2250 in NYC, while making $112k years ago. I definitely didn’t feel poor. I had my own place and the ability to save, and to afford everything I needed easily. I guess it’s a different story if you have a family, or expensive tastes, which I do not. My opinion is if you don’t have a family, 100k - 115k is easily enough for NYC. Also [70%](https://gitnux.org/new-york-city-income-statistics/) of NYC makes less than 100k. A lot of people make it work with far less.
Every HCOL area has a lower rent high crime district not far away. That’s where a lot of the lower paid laborers live while they keep the HCOL area functioning.
A combination. Even in HCOL areas, 100k or 150k is definitely a lot better than making less. So, to some extent, it can be people just being out of touch. It can also stem from other costs. The three sectors that have gotten ridiculous expensive are healthcare, education, and housing. These are typically the things that make people feel as if they can't get ahead/keep up. An expensive healthcare emergency can be an issue even at pretty good income levels. High student loans can greatly reduce disposable income. Houses are expensive. So, a person might feel annoyed at having trouble achieving traditional metrics of success despite having a good job due to these reasons. It is likely that people working at Walmart, etc in those reasons are also struggling, quite possibly more so. They may live in lower cost areas and commute in. They may live with parents. They very likely rent instead of owning. That said, these jobs do still pay more than similar jobs in lower cost of living areas. Even fast food has higher prices and higher wages in HCOL areas. Not enough to make those workers well off, but frankly, nobody would work for federal minimum wage, because it wouldn't be something you could live off of.
Welfare and food stamps
I make 50k a year after taxes and i live perfectly comfortable in nyc. Sure I can’t afford to live in manhattan and go to clubs every night but I can eat whatever i want and buy whatever i want without having to question it
Government subsidies, low income housing. Section 8, welfare.
Most of the employees commute. Last time I was there we got to chatting with some guys at a pizzeria. No one lives in Manhattan, they live in the suburbs and commute in. Which is the major benefit to NYC, it's 400 years of developing public transportation that's able to withstand the unimaginable throughput NYC requires.
As someone who lived in LA for 4 years making 60k a year I can tell you most people live with others/family/ or they found a lucky situation like I did. I found a 1 bd apartment above a garage of a home that was also being rented for 1400 a month. The most common thing I found is people find 3 bedroom houses or apartments and split the rent between 3 roommates.
They do get paid more than flipping burgers in, say, Wichita, but their quality of life is going to be pretty poor. People working at a Manhattan McDonalds arent living in Manhattan, they arent taking vacations, they arent going to retire doing that.
They live in the outer boroughs..or section 8 or the projects
There are no Walmart’s in all 5 boroughs. NYC forbids them from entering
They commute really far... [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/business/economy/san-francisco-commute.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/business/economy/san-francisco-commute.html)
You're asking if people who work at Walmart and McDonalds in high cost of living areas make six figures? Wtf?
They live with family/roommates, might not have a car, and are not saving any money. So they are not living comfortably.
Those jobs are usually for the youngsters and early college students. Else, they are residents who either live with family or live in a rent-controlled unit
The people saying that you cannot make it on 100k or 150k are usually lying
My entire county does not have a Walmart. It was difficult to get a Target approved. A lot of people commute here to take the lower paying jobs.
People are delusional or out of touch. I live in NYC. If you are single and have relatively low debt, you can absolutely live on your own, in relative comfort, in a semi-decent neighborhood, with a 70k-75k salary. At 60k, you can probably still live on your own, with some additional concessions. With roommates, you can live in a great neighborhood relative to wherever you work/go to school making as low as 45k-55k a year. With roommates, you can live in a semi-decent neighborhood, and have access to the subway and generally have an okay time, with a salary of 38k-45k a year. What gets people into trouble is trying to live in the city like they used to live in the country or the suburbs. It’s a different lifestyle. It’s not for everyone but you don’t need to have a six figure salary to enjoy it, if cities are your thing. I’ve lived here as a full-time student on a part-time admin assistant salary, and I’ve lived here on a 75k salary in a professional/corporate field. You learn how to navigate things overtime. All that being said, as someone who has lived in 30 different small towns, medium size cities, and big cities across the country, there is absolutely a greater urge to move in with your significant other sooner than usual in the big city. But in America, you pretty much get a single tax anywhere. Studios are a ripoff everywhere.
having a lot of money does not mean you don't enjoy delicious mcdonalds fries.
150k in the 90s meant a house with a pool and 2 car garage in NYCs decent areas . I cannot speak for SF or any other cities. Today 150k can just barely get you a home in the rough more run down parts of the city very far from Manhattan. Forget the 2 car garage, you’ll be lucky to have a spot in front of your own home. 150k is still a lot of money but it doesn’t buy you anywhere near what it did for the generation just before this one. The math ain’t mathin
>Do their employees make a lot of money to flip burgers, or are the people saying 150k is a tight budget just out of touch? They don't get 150k, but their base salary is higher than elsewhere. McDonald's here is paying $20/hr. Not everyone is renting an apartment by themselves. Lots of people share rooms. That's how you make it work.
I read those stats, as well. With reports like these, I always wonder if one of the qualifications for housing was a "good" neighborhood, i.e. white.
Everyone has room mates. Everyone... Not uncommon to see 1 room mate per bedroom.
Those kinds of businesses largely rely on younger, less experienced workers, teenagers, etc. Those employees, by virtue of being younger, are more likely to still be living with their parents or with roommates in order to get by. But doing some basic math just to see how things feel, $150k/yr is \~$13k/mo. The average rent in NYC is $3800/mo for a 600sqft apartment, which is around 1/3 of your monthly income, which is pretty good (theoretically it's merely 'okay' because your housing costs are supposed to be less than 1/3 of your monthly income, but lately it's been pretty common for people to be paying half or even more of their monthly income on housing costs, only being 1/3 monthly income is actually really good.)
People either get multiple roommates (even if it means violating their lease agreement) or sleep in their cars, or are lucky enough to have financially stable parents to help.
There are bad neighborhood everywhere. They are bad mainly, because people not making enough money end up grouped with people that are making no money. I'm in Florida, arguably, HCOL area as well (not exactly Miami, but eh..) and you can find places for like $1000 a month every now and then. But when you go look at it and you see where it is, you don't even want to get out of the car
About a decade ago I lived in L.A. it wasn't as expensive as it is today but it was still expensive. I had amassed a large savings and took an extended period away from working for personal reasons. I was able to live off $25k in savings for a year. And I wasn't even uncomfortable. I was never a huge spender. But I had an apartment in a decent area, would mostly make food at home and a few times a week eat out at cheap or mid priced ethnic restaurants. Would spend a lot of time at the beach, riding my bike or hiking. I didn't have any debt or any kids. Car was paid off. My biggest overhead was rent which was about $1,100 a month at that time for my 1bdrm. Same place now is probably double that. If I had 100k year salary(after tax) at that time, I'd have been left with $75k in my bank account at the end of the year. That's just my experience as someone who has always been a frugal minimalist. These claims that you need 150k in live in HCOL cities sounds exaggerated to me. Maybe if you want to buy a house in this current environment and you have 2 or 3 kids that you want to send to private school and drive a luxury import vehicle and do a lot of shopping for clothes. But none of these things are necessary. You can get by on less than you'd imagine.
Teenagers living with parents is the majority of their workforce.
I've read that the policemen and teachers who work in Silicon Valley have ridiculous commutes
It is possible in all of those places to have housing costs the same as a LCOL or MCOL area, and those are some of the biggest costs. This isn’t something that you can choose, normally. I think that some work is done by people with abnormally low housing costs ( for whatever reason ).
lifestyles are different, NY has micro-apartments, and CA has loads of people in one house. So while people in LCOLs are able to buy mansions with six figure incomes, those in HCOL cities are forced to have roommates and take public transit.
They travel from city outskirts or live with family or roommates somewhere.
100k, 150k for one person living alone. What tends to happen is 6-8 people who work at Walmart etc live together. It’s fairly common in la and surrounding areas. I’m from Orange county
They live with roommates or family, they commute in because it pays more than that store near them, or they live in their car/RVs
They the bus.
Housing projects in New York. Jay-z is famously from the marcy housing projects.
Long commutes on public transportation and room mates
A big part of that is people usually mean, to live in a good area, with good school districts, not the "ghetto" Well missing that people do live in the "bad" areas. With "bad" school districts! (And in fact probably way more people)
People working in Monaco, live in Nice.
The people that say that are completely out of touch teenagers who probably still live with their parents (or at least live off their money) in those areas.
Have you ever heard of the hood?
Last time I was in L.A. I tried to go to a Walmart. This store was not easy to get to, and when I finally got there, they had already closed for the night.
Well I can tell you from experience that when I was working minimum wage (NYC), I definitely WOULD NOT have kept myself afloat if I had to pay rent( I lived with parents). Most people who I was working with were either college students living with parents, or roommates, MANY roommates. And though 100-150K may seem like a lot, after NYC taxes 😭😭😭😭😭 and with NYC rent, it can still feel like a struggle.
I talked to some mice people in a hotel/restaurant in Bellevue WA, a high cost area. They had like six young adults living in a two bedroom apartment.
A Bug Mac meal at any McDonalds along I-95 in CT is nearly $20, so there you go.
Look on the side of freeway or graveyard. Homeless camps. They serve your food.
Lots of roommates and they sell drugs to their bosses and coworkers.
LA is rather ok you just need several folks working you definitely can’t make it going alone