Less than half of Philly-area full-time workers make a living wage, report says
The report compared payroll data for the region with the estimated income workers must earn to cover their basic needs.
A living wage is becoming less attainable for Philadelphia-area residents, even those who work full-time.
In 2025, 44.3% of full-time workers made a living wage in the 11-county region, which includes Wilmington and Camden, according to a new report from Dayforce, a company that provides payroll and workforce management software.
That’s a decline from 2021, when 54.7% full-time workers in the region made a living wage, according to Dayforce.
The average living wage in the Philadelphia region is $32.88 per hour for a family with two adults and two children, based on data from the Living Wage Institute. Dayforce’s report used the institute’s living wage for each area county, compared with its own anonymized payroll data and information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The local decline is on par with the national trend, but a bit more pronounced. Across the U.S., 50.7% of full-time workers earned a living wage last year, down from 55.8% in 2021.
The U.S. data shows racial disparities, as 60.4% of white workers and 57.5% of Asian workers made a living wage last year, but only 33.3% of Latino workers and 31.2% of Black workers earned a living wage.
U.S. men (58.7%) are more likely than women (43.7%) to make a living wage working full-time.
“We are the wealthiest nation the world has ever known, and half of full-time workers here don’t make enough to cover the basic needs of their families. That’s pretty shocking,” said Jason Rahlan, global head of sustainability and impact at Dayforce.
Of five metro areas in the report, Philadelphia saw the largest decline in the share of workers making enough to cover their basic needs, which includes transportation, housing, food and healthcare.
“How we measure a living wage is not really about thriving at all. It’s about the bare minimum that you need,” said Kavya Vaghul, a co-founder of the Living Wage Institute. “To say that half of the American workforce isn’t able to achieve that to support their families is gargantuan. It’s a big issue.”
Rising costs
During the pandemic, wages rose for hourly workers and those in frontline jobs, said Vaghul.
“Those [pay] increases had real power in actually beginning to close the gap between what workers earned and what it actually costs to live,” she said. But those gains were eroded by the rising cost of living.
Fewer people making a living wage, Vaghul said, is “not because wages are necessarily going down, but it’s because the costs have kept climbing while wage growth has actually decelerated.”’
Housing, childcare, and healthcare costs have “all climbed really substantially” since 2021 in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania, she said. Healthcare costs alone are up more than 50% in the region, Vaghul noted.
In Pennsylvania, some 70,000 residents opted out of the Pennie plan as the end of a federal incentive program caused their insurance costs to become unaffordable, the Inquirer reported earlier this year.
Meanwhile, more Philadelphia households are spending over a third of their earnings on rent, and childcare for two children costs more than rent on average.
Dayforce’s report didn’t break down pay data by industry. But Vaghul said retail, caregiving, food service, and hospitality have a large share of hourly workers, who are less likely than salaried employees to earn a living wage.
While older workers are more likely to make a living wage, many still fell short: workers aged 45 to 54 had the best likelihood of make a living wage but only 61.1% achieved that level of pay.
Rahlan, of Dayforce, said he hopes the report’s findings will be a wake up call.
“Every worker deserves the opportunity to achieve the American dream, and that simply isn’t possible if you’re not earning enough to meet the basic needs of you and your family,” said Rahlan.
Vaghul said employers have a vested interest in paying a living wage.
“When you’re thinking about a worker’s basic financial stability, you’re also planning to reduce turnover, to improve attendance, to increase productivity, to reduce those hiring costs that go into it,” said Vaghul. “The employers that use this as an input to their compensation strategy don’t need to be thinking about this as just an act of charity. It’s because the math really works here.”
