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Put annually: $31,200 a year before tax, and here that's a stretch. Here's the full breakdown, per hour, per week, per month.
$15.00 an hour is $31,200 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare, and Illinois income tax you keep $25,850, which is $2,154 a month or $994 every two weeks. Against Chicago prices running 3.6% above the national average, that spends like $24,951 would somewhere average.
$31,200 a year, which is what $15.00 an hour comes to, against a city that costs 3.6% more than average. Here's how those two numbers meet.
So let's run the whole thing.
Everything here assumes 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, which is 2,080 hours a year with no unpaid time off. If your hours get cut, or the schedule dips in a slow month, scale it down from here. Single filer, standard deduction, 2026 brackets.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross pay (2,080 hours) | $31,200 |
| Federal income tax | −$1,564 |
| Social Security and Medicare | −$2,387 |
| Illinois state income tax | −$1,400 |
| Take-home pay | $25,850 |
| Take-home a month | $2,154 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $994 |
| Take-home a week | $497 |
| Take-home an hour | $12.43 |
| Adjusted for Chicago prices (3.6% above average) | $24,951 |
Tax takes $5,350 of that $31,200, or 17% of it. What's left is $25,850 a year, which is $2,154 a month, $994 every two weeks, or $497 a week.
So the honest hourly figure is $12.43, not $15.00. Every hour you work is worth that much to your bank account, not what's printed on the schedule.
That last row is the one nobody shows you. The federal government scores every metro against a national average of 100, and Chicago scores 103.6. Living here costs you roughly $900 a year of buying power before you've bought anything, purely for buying it here.
This is the deduction that catches people who moved for the higher rate.
Illinois takes about $1,400 a year at this wage, an effective rate of 4.5% once brackets, deductions and exemptions have all been applied. On a weekly check that's roughly $27.
Add federal and the payroll taxes and you have the whole reason the check never matches the hours times the rate.
A one-bedroom at Chicago's fair market rent runs $1,581 a month, $1,781 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $2,154 a month, the one-bedroom eats 73% of it.
That's more than 45% of your take-home going to rent alone, which is severely cost-burdened by any standard definition. It leaves $573 a month for everything else, and that's before a car or childcare.
The headline figure averages over things that behave differently. In Chicago the spread runs from rent and housing, 12% above the national average, down to utilities at 16% below it.
Worth knowing which of those matters to you. Someone renting a small place and eating out often has a very different experience of this city than someone with a mortgage and a big grocery bill.
Chicago peaked in 2011 at 106.9 and has been coming back down since. It now sits 3.3 index points below that high.
Relative prices coming off a peak doesn't mean anything got cheaper in dollar terms. It means the rest of the country caught up.
And it has not dipped below the national average once in that entire stretch.
Flip it: $15.54 an hour here puts you where $15.00 an hour puts someone in an average-priced city.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $1,581 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $39.89 an hour, which is $24.89 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $51,774 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago, IL | 103.6 | $2,154 | $24,951 |
| Columbus, OH | 95.5 | $2,264 | $28,454 |
| Phoenix, AZ | 103.3 | $2,223 | $25,826 |
| Seattle, WA | 111.1 | $2,271 | $24,527 |
Your pay, your two cities, real federal price data. It takes about fifteen seconds.
Compare my citiesHonestly, it's a stretch. $15.00 an hour leaves $24,951 of real purchasing power in Chicago, and about $900 of that shortfall is the city rather than the tax code.
People do make this work here. They make it work by splitting rent, which is a real answer and not the same as the wage being enough.
Send the whole thing to your inbox so you can come back to it, or forward it to whoever you're deciding this with. We'll also tell you in January when the 2027 tax brackets and federal price data land and every number here changes.
The breakdown, then about one email a year. No sales pitch, unsubscribe any time.Gross, it's $31,200 a year at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. After federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, and Illinois income tax, you keep about $25,850. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $2,154 a month in Chicago, which is $994 on a biweekly schedule or $497 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Chicago it comes to $25,850 of take-home against a price level of 103.6, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $24,951 somewhere average. The price premium costs you roughly $900 a year against the national average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $646 a month. A one-bedroom at Chicago's fair market rent is $1,581, which is 73% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $935 a month. Fair market rent is HUD's 40th-percentile figure including utilities, so it reads as the realistic floor rather than a typical listing.
Price levels are Regional Price Parities from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal government's official measure of geographic price differences. Rent is HUD fair market rent for fiscal year 2026. Tax figures are 2026 federal brackets and Illinois state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.