The common example given is how Walmart is the largest employer of people on SNAP in the USA, which equates to corporate welfare. Walmart is directly receiving taxpayer dollars since they don't need to pay employees a living wage.
But even if that’s the case, it doesn’t say “to live alone” or “to live without government assistance.” It just says “to live.”
I don’t think having roommates or a rent-controlled apartment is so terrible that it wouldn’t qualify as “living.” It doesn’t have to be completely literal. If it meant not being homeless, I could work with that. But a number that’s more than 50% higher than the median? I don’t know what the heck it means “to live” in that case. It clearly means something well beyond what the average New Yorker actually has, but I don’t know what and I don’t know why you’d call that “living.”
"New York families need six-figure incomes to live without government assistance in all five boroughs of New York City, according to two new reports."
Anyway, I don't trust media summaries of reports. The bit of the article I can see mentions two new reports, but I can only see a link to one, which is three years old.
That report says it's based on something called the "NYC True Cost of Living" which does actually have a 2026 edition: https://www.fcny.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/NYC2026_TCL_...
That report lists a $125,814/year "cost of meeting basic needs" for the lowest amount of any borough, which fits the headline. But that figure is also based on having one preschool child, which according to the report costs $33,000 for child care. Lots of families don't, so their figure would be substantially less. The report says that 46% of working-age NYC households fall below the True Cost of Living, which certainly doesn't fit with that cost being so much higher than the median income, even considering the "working-age" qualifier.
The 2023 edition of the report has a lot more details: https://selfsufficiencystandard.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/.... If I'm reading that right, they're calculating housing costs at the 40th percentile in a given area, which doesn't make any sense when calculating the minimum needed. In this case, the areas are entire boroughs, or borough halves for Manhattan and Brooklyn.
I see this kind of nonsense all over the place. Random example: https://www.investopedia.com/minimum-wage-earners-can-not-co.... "There are no major American cities that hold an average monthly rental cost which is 30% of a minimum wage earner's gross income." OK, why would we compare the minimum wage with the average rent? If you want to find out what people can afford, you need to look at the lowest available cost, not the average.
So, I remain skeptical of the claim made by this article.
You really don’t believe it? You have access to Zillow.com right? You work at Meta HQ in Manhattan now as a contracted facilities worker cleaning the building. The highest pay I see on Indeed in Manhattan is around $21/hour for custodians, let’s be generous and call it $25/hour. Find an apartment for within a 1 hour commute for the suggested 1/3 gross income ($1444/month). Now imagine your spouse doesn’t work a full time job because you can’t afford child care and you have two kids. How is this working out exactly?
It’s not even that much better if you have a college degrees, like I see RN jobs in Manhattan at under $40/hour - and those folks are probably in student loan debt.
Basic-ass math demonstrates the situation. Stop focusing on the little nitpicks you have with these journalistic outlets.
