Report finds living wage gap increases — and racial wealth gap is broad
A new report found that by 2025, only about half of U.S. full-time workers earned enough income to meet the cost of everyday necessities. The post Report finds living wage gap increases — and racial wealth gap is broad appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.
Black News 
A new report found that by 2025, only about half of U.S. full-time workers earned enough income to meet the cost of everyday housing, food, and childcare necessities.
The “Earning Enough: Living Wage Access in America 2026” report comes from the human resources consulting firm Dayforce and the Living Wage Institute, a for-profit benefit corporation. It shows that while paycheck amounts are rising, they are not keeping pace with soaring costs for essentials like housing, food, and childcare. The number of full-time workers who earn what the report defines as a living wage fell from 55.8% in 2021 to 50.7% in 2025, a drop of 5 percentage points in four years.
The study finds that gaps by race and gender are continuing –– and widening –– with Black workers and Latino workers among those least likely to reach the living-wage benchmark.
The wage decline can be seen in most regions of the country, including many of the nation’s biggest population centers. The report’s analysis found that salaried workers were far more likely to earn a living wage than hourly workers: 83.1% of salaried employees earned a living wage, compared with 30.3% of full-time hourly workers. That gap stands out because hourly jobs are typically held by workers of color. Such jobs are often “essential worker” positions, in areas like healthcare, emergency services, grocery stores and restaurants, childcare, mail and delivery services, and transportation, that the larger community relies on for daily life.
The report also found that 58.7% of men earned a living wage in 2025, compared with 43.7% of women. That means if a woman is the main household earner — and in particular, a single mother — “earning enough” is nearly impossible, even with full-time work.
Dayforce images
Numbers for Black workers are especially alarming
The “Earning Enough” report’s most urgent element was its racial breakdown. In 2025, only 31.2% of Black full-time workers earned a living wage, compared with 60.4% of white workers. Latino workers stood at 33.3%, also far below the benchmark reached by white workers. For many Black workers, full-time employment does not necessarily lead to stability: Families are more likely to face tradeoffs between rent and childcare, groceries and transportation, prescriptions and utilities.
The new report also points to declines in living-wage access for both Black and Latino workers since 2021. Even if some employers increased wages after the COVID-19 pandemic, the price increases that have led to the affordability crisis helped deepen the racial gap, the report says.
However, the data reveals one limited bright spot among the youngest workers: Generation Z’s living-wage access increased to 29.4%. However, most Gen Z workers are still not earning enough to meet basic needs, and the larger group of workers ages 20–34 saw declines.
“Earning Enough” was co-authored by Dayforce, a human capital management company, and the Living Wage Institute, a benefit corporation founded in 2023 that works based on information from more than 20 years of Living Wage Calculator research. The Living Wage Institute defines a “living wage” by determining what households actually require in specific regions and provides resources and data to help employers, policymakers, and communities compare pay levels to local living costs. Dayforce describes its efforts as part of a larger push to measure the economic self-sufficiency of workers. “The costs of housing, food, childcare, and other essentials are elevated; energy prices have spiked; and affordability continues to be a major issue for a significant share of the workforce,” said Jason Rahlan, global head of sustainability & impact for Dayforce. “For many, their earnings are simply not enough to meet the basic needs of their families. Defining a ‘living wage’ — what it costs to provide for a family and how many workers earn enough — has never been more urgent.”
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