Wimer pointed out that others have tried to make budgets like Green’s before. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s state-by-state Living Wage Calculator says that in Maryland, for instance, two working adults with two children need an income of $129,572 to afford food, child care, housing, transportation and other expenses. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute says that for a “modest but adequate standard of living,” a family needs $139,524 to pay for housing, child care, health care, food and transportation in the D.C. metro area, or a little over $100,000 in Birmingham, Alabama, or Cleveland, or $84,019 in El Paso.
The Washington Post
December 1, 2025
To be sure, Green acknowledged his calculations are based on costs in suburban New Jersey. His threshold is also above the median household income for a family of four in 37 states, according to the Washington Post.
But Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator and the Economic Policy Institute have also put family expenses in some states at more than $100,000 a year.
Fortune
December 1, 2025
Affordability – or the lack of it – is dominating the public discourse. “Affordability, affordability, affordability: Democrats’ new winning formula,” proclaims Politico. “Trump tries to seize ‘affordability’ message,” reports The New York Times. Election results in New Jersey, Virginia, New York and elsewhere showed that voters are responding to candidates who speak directly to the cost of living.
Today’s affordability debate, however, focuses almost entirely on prices, as if the only way to make life affordable is to make things cheaper. But that approach misses the bigger picture. Affordability depends on both prices and wages. The roots of today’s affordability crisis actually lie not in recent price spikes, but in the long-term suppression of workers’ pay.
MSNBC.com
December 1, 2025
Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute notes that between 1973 and 2013, the average hourly wage increased just 9%. For students who either work a minimum-wage job in high school, hoping to put themselves through college, or work while pursuing their studies, a wage increase of less than 10% does little to offset a nearly 315% rise in costs.
Straight Arrow News
December 1, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute was the latest to join the fray with an “accountability dashboard” that compiles private-sector indicators as a check against any efforts to manipulate government statistics. Those concerns have multiplied since Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August after a weak jobs report.
“We’re collecting all data we can to assess the economy’s health in this time when the gold standard data are under attack,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at EPI.
Bloomberg Economics Daily Newsletter
December 1, 2025
Data from Data USA and the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator indicate that the average retiree should budget $27,787 to cover personal living costs for a year.
House Digest
December 1, 2025
CALARCO: I think we have to be very mindful of how Trump’s deportation policies are threatening to undermine the progress that has already been made on child care. There was a report that came out in July of 2025 from the Economic Policy Institute that found that if Trump is able to carry out his full immigration agenda, those deportations will end up eliminating half a million child care jobs in the U.S. Immigrant women currently play an outsized role in the child care workforce – that trickle-down of the way that we…
NPR It's Been A Minute Podcast
December 1, 2025
At least 26 states have created their own versions of DOGE, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Daily Voice
December 1, 2025
These changes come as Francis Howell and other districts across the nation face a school bus driver shortage, as reported by the Economic Policy Institute. Legislation was introduced last year in the U.S. House of Representatives to address the issue.
Mid Rivers Magazine
December 1, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, this 2001 bubble burst was marred by a slower recovery, leading to a “tougher economy for highly educated …[paywall].
Forbes
December 1, 2025