What type of wage is required to support a 1 income household for a family of 3? What would it look like? What type of wage would be required to support a family of 3 if they had a 2 income household? What wage would it take to live life “comfortably” for a family of 3? Let’s talk about the cost of living in the state of Ohio, currently, in order to find out these answer. After that, we’ll break down the $/hour needed in order to create a true living wage within the state of Ohio.

Since we know what the Federal Poverty Guideline is for a family of 3, let’s start there. In order to live above the poverty line, a family of 3 needs to make $26,650 per year, or more. But what can you afford with this budget? THIS is REALITY for many in Columbus, and many more throughout the rest of Ohio.

According to the US Census Bureau, as of 2023, early 18% of Columbus lives in poverty, meaning they make $26,650 a year or less. According to USAFacts (which pulls its data from the US Census Bureau), nearly 13% of Ohioans throughout our state also live in poverty. To put this into numbers we can easily understand, this means that almost 1.5 MILLION Ohioans are living in poverty, and roughly 168,000 in Columbus alone are living in poverty. *Side note: the population of Columbus in 2024 was 933,263 (nearly 1 million people) and the entire population of the state of Ohio in 2024 was 11,883,304 (nearly 11.9 million people).*

So let’s build a budget for the Smith family, a completely made up Columbus family, with VERY REAL problems. The only rule that the Smith Family has to follow in our budgeting experiment is that Smith Family ONLY ever lives on the city or state-wide average for anything they need. There will only be 3 exceptions to this rule; 1st, that the Smith Family only makes $26,650 so their health insurance will be subsidized, 2nd they don’t have any pets (the state average is about 2 pets per family, according to Google), 3rd we’re going to assume that the Smith Family has NO Credit Card Debt.

Let’s imagine Suzy Smith is a stay at home parent and her partner Sammy Smith is the bread-winner. Suzy and Sammy have 1 child together. Baby Sarah is 2, so still too little for pre-school or even pre-kindergarten. Baby Sarah doesn’t go to daycare because Suzy is a stay at home parent, saving some money where they can, but Suzy still takes Baby Sarah to play dates and other free fun things to do outside the home. The only cost usually involved in those activities is the cost to put gas in Suzy’s car.

The Smith Family lives modestly in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment near Whitehall. The average cost of rent for Columbus is $1,224 per month. Zillow says that the average is $1,350 per month, though. So let’s split the difference and say the Smith Family actually pays, $1,287 per month. The average cost for all their utilities are around $560 per month.

• Here’s the average for each utility -

  • Electricity: $138

  • Water: $50

  • Sewer: $75

  • Trash: $63

  • Phone: $120

  • Internet: $75

  • and Streaming Services: $43.

  • They spend $1,192 in groceries per month, the state average.

Both adults have 1 car each. One car is entirely paid off and the other still has a small loan balance but the car originally cost $10k and it costs Sammy about $200 for the loan repayment. This is the state average. They need car insurance for both cars. Both cars are a little more than 12 years old, which is the state average. Since 1 car is paid off, they only have the state minimum mandatory insurance on it which is $32 a month ($390 a year). The car they still have a loan on is required to have full coverage insurance through the credit union they have the loan through. Full coverage on the other car is $145 per month ($1,739 per year). These are the average car insurance costs for the state of Ohio. The Average cost of gas is roughly $150/month per car, based on the assumption that Suzy and Sammy drive the state average of 1,189 miles per month, the cars they drive from 2014, and those cars get the average miles per gallon for that year of 24.3 MPG, and that the state wide average for gas is right around $3.00/gallon like is was in 2025.

Lastly, Sammy and Suzy get very basic Health Insurance, meant mostly to cover Emergency Room visits, for themselves and Baby Sarah who is 2 years old. Because they only make $26,650 a year, they are on a form of Medicaid and receive Health Insurance through Oscar at no cost to them. If they had to pay out of pocket and did not receive ACA Tax Credits, it could be up to $1,115 per month for all of 3 of them to get Health Insurance.

SO! With all that being said, how much money are they spending in a month on the average essentials?
Rent:$1,287
Utilities: $560
Groceries: $1,192
Car Insurance: $177 (for both cars)
Car Payment: $200
Gas: $300 ($150 per car)
Health Insurance: $0
Total Spent Per Month: $3,716
$3,716 x 12 months = $44,592

The completely fake Smith Family spent $44,592 a year to be the most average family in Ohio and they only made $26,650 ($12.81/hour with a 40 hour work week) from Sammy’s single income; the Federal Poverty Guideline amount for a family of 3. So the Smith Family is a whole 2nd income away from having all of their BASIC needs met. They are $17,942 in the negative.

So what does $44,592 a year translate into for an hourly rate? $21.44/ hour. JUST to have ONLY your family’s most basic needs met, Sammy would have to find a job paying $21.44 per hour or more. This doesn’t even allow the Smith Family to save up any money for emergencies, go out to eat, or do fun family activities that have a cost or fee associated with them. If the Smith Family wanted to be able to save for any kind of emergency, they would need to be able to have at least 3 months worth of living expenses set aside, for a total of $11,148. So, that plus $44,592 is actually, $55,740, which means, Sammy would actually need to make $26.80/hour to account for an emergency fund…

So there we have it. Rounding up to make it easier: In order for a family of 3 with 1 household income to live comfortably, you would need to make roughly $56,000 per year in Columbus. That’s $26.92 an hour.

The facts are easy to follow. We NEED to make $20 an hour the standard at the very least, if not $25 per hour!