A person working full time needs to make over $51,000 a year, or $24.85 an hour, to live in Tompkins County, according to a new study from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
In 2023, the last time the study was conducted, the county’s living wage was calculated at $18.45. The projected amount needed to make a living wage jumped by over 30% between the two studies. The legal minimum wage in upstate New York is $15.50.
The study defines a living wage as the “minimum hourly amount that a full-time worker must earn to afford basic necessities.”
Ian Greer is the director of Cornell’s Ithaca Co-Lab, which produced the study.
“My first reaction was, this is bad. Life is getting really hard for working people,” he said.
Greer said rising housing and transportation costs were major contributors to the increase in the estimated living wage.
Nearly half of all workers in Tompkins County make less than the living wage. Black Tompkins County residents are disproportionately likely to be a part of that group, according to the study.
“Almost two-thirds of Black workers are making less than a living wage,” Greer said. “With white workers, it's just below half.”
Hispanic, Asian and Indigenous workers are also less likely to earn a living wage than their white counterparts. Men are slightly more likely to make a living wage than women in the county.
“Every time we do this calculation, we look at the labor market data, and we see these disparities, and they're always pretty substantial.”
Raising wages for the lowest paid workers would help to mitigate some of these inequities, Greer said.
Greer added that workers are going to have to fight to see their pay match skyrocketing expenses in the county.
“It's going to take some time for wages to catch up to this increase in the cost of living, if it ever does.”