One possibility would be living at your parents place. You don’t earn a living wage, but your parents subsidize your existence. That probably accounts for a lot of ~75% of Gen Z not earning a living wage.

Yes, I wonder how big of a piece this captures. Also age, education.

Yep. My daughter and her fiancé lived with us 2 years while they saved up to get a down payment. Thankfully we have a furnished basement.

His parents payed a bunch of the deposit so they could get a better house closer to them.

In NYC lots of younger folks are also subsidized by mom & dad and/or live 5 to an apartment.

Sharing an apartment doesn't mean the minimum standard? I.e. one has to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment on their own, or else they don't have a living wage?

Yes. Plus a kid. Because that's what society relies on in the end, that we don't stop existing after a generation because it was too expensive.

This could be trivially rigged by walling up the current large open apartment spaces to create very small private apartments - then voila, a large demographic suddenly has a living wage. Yet the living standard would arguably be worse.

Or do we plan on drastically increasing the builds and availability of one-bedroom apartments in a metropolis through sprawl? That doesn't sound very YIMBY.

>Or do we plan on drastically increasing the builds and availability of one-bedroom apartments in a metropolis through sprawl? That doesn't sound very YIMBY.

Not through sprawl necessarily, but yes that's the plan[0][1]

[0] https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2023/01/hochul-wants-b...

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2022-12-08/new...

You can also beg for food on the street and technically survive, so there has to be some reasonable standard for what living wage. I'm pretty sure the poster you are replying to is not implying that those 5 people would be splitting a 5 bedroom apartment... Probably more like 5 people in a 2 bedroom.

Absolutely. I know plenty of people in their 20s doing this. Living room converted into bedroom, 4 people (including couples), still paying some 2K in rent a month, but hey its manhattan

It's a bit confusing at a definitional level too. If 60% don't earn a living wage, how are they surviving? Surely your definition of "living wage" is more of a marketing gimick than anything, if 60% of people manage to "live" without earning the "living wage"?

> how are they surviving?

"Living wage" isn't "surviving wage"

You will admit though that they are deliberately conflated in the public discourse.

It's good to see people finally admitting America is incapable of being greater than Bangladesh or Ethiopia.

It’s delusional to think that a lot of people from those countries you mentioned wouldn’t want to swap lives with one of those oppressed NYC workers in a second.

Yet from most discourse I see it seems a lot of people actually believe it’s better in Ethiopia.

A few years ago Venezuela was held up as the poster child of how to defeat capitalism by the same people.

Living wage is defined.

"The living wage model is a ‘step up’ from poverty as measured by the poverty thresholds but it is a small ‘step up’, one that accounts for only the basic needs of a family. The living wage model does not allow for what many consider the basic necessities enjoyed by many Americans. It does not budget funds for pre-prepared meals or those eaten in restaurants. It does not include money for unpaid vacations or holidays. Nor does it provide money income to cover unexpected expenses such as a sudden illness, a major car repair, or the purchase of a household appliance such as a refrigerator. Lastly, it does not provide a financial means for planning for the future through savings and investment or for the purchase of capital assets (e.g. provisions for retirement or home purchases)."

Basically: "The living wage is the basic income standard that, if met, draws a very fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity."

In addition: "In light of this fact, the living wage is perhaps better defined as a minimum subsistence wage for persons living in the United States."

> This definition seems more like...

...you didn't read it, and you are merely complaining about the name of a rose.

> The living wage model does not allow for what many consider the basic necessities enjoyed by many Americans.

Call it whatever you want... New York being one of the richest states in the United States, saying that the median person in New York cannot afford "what many consider the basic necessities enjoyed by many Americans" is a contradiction. The idea that 60% of New Yorkers are not even at "subsistence" level of wages just makes no sense.

That is what it is meant to describe, but it must also have a definition based on qualifying metrics. If sharing an apartment is tantamount to living below minimum standards, then there is a mismatch with it's descriptor, since wages that don't cover an entire one-bedroom does not necessitate that one is dangerously close to requiring public assistance.

A big one is people are probably living in higher densities than the data assumes, eg the housing budget for a living wage assumes 1 single adult will live alone in a studio. In my younger years, I knew a lot of people who were sleeping like 3+ adults in a 1 bedroom in NYC, which obviously not ideal but people make it work if they don't have the money:

"The FMR (HUD Fair Market Rents) estimates include utility costs and vary depending on the number of bedrooms in each unit, from zero to four bedrooms. We assumed that a one adult family would rent a single occupancy unit (zero bedrooms) for an individual adult household, that a two adult family would rent a one bedroom apartment, and that two adult and one or two child families would rent a two bedroom apartment. We further assumed that families with three children would rent a three bedroom apartment (the adults are allocated one bedroom and the children two bedrooms)."

https://livingwage.mit.edu/resources/Living-Wage-Users-Guide...