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The headline number: $31,200 a year before tax, and it's thin even where prices run below average. Here's the whole calculation, tax by tax.
$15.00 an hour is $31,200 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare, and Iowa income tax you keep $26,675, which is $2,223 a month or $1,026 every two weeks. Against Des Moines prices running 8.3% below the national average, that spends like $29,090 would somewhere average.
$15.00 an hour comes to $31,200 before tax. Des Moines costs 8.3% less than the national average, which is the single biggest thing working in your favour here.
Right. Let's do the actual math.
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 |
| Iowa state income tax | −$574 |
| Take-home pay | $26,675 |
| Take-home a month | $2,223 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $1,026 |
| Take-home a week | $513 |
| Take-home an hour | $12.82 |
| Adjusted for Des Moines prices (8.3% below average) | $29,090 |
Tax takes $4,525 of that $31,200, or 15% of it. What's left is $26,675 a year, which is $2,223 a month, $1,026 every two weeks, or $513 a week.
So the honest hourly figure is $12.82, 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 Des Moines scores 91.7. Living here hands you back roughly $2,400 a year of buying power you wouldn't have somewhere average.
This is the deduction that catches people who moved for the higher rate.
Iowa takes about $574 a year at this wage, an effective rate of 1.8% once brackets, deductions and exemptions have all been applied. On a weekly check that's roughly $11.
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 Des Moines's fair market rent runs $1,109 a month, $1,318 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $2,223 a month, the one-bedroom eats 50% 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 $1,114 a month for everything else, and that's before a car or childcare.
The cheapness here is concentrated where it counts. Housing in Des Moines runs 15% below the national average, against goods at 6% below.
Housing is the biggest line in most budgets, so a discount there is worth more than the headline figure suggests. This is the kind of place where a middling salary buys space.
Des Moines peaked in 2009 at 97.2 and has been coming back down since. It now sits 5.5 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.
For what it's worth, Des Moines has not been more expensive than the national average in a single year of this series.
Turn it around and it runs in your favour. Matching what $15.00 an hour buys nationally only takes $13.76 an hour in Des Moines.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $1,109 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $26.11 an hour, which is $11.11 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $23,102 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Des Moines, IA | 91.7 | $2,223 | $29,090 |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 90.4 | $2,199 | $29,193 |
| Birmingham, AL | 91.6 | $2,163 | $28,334 |
| Milwaukee, WI | 96.9 | $2,217 | $27,450 |
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 $29,090 of real purchasing power in Des Moines, and almost all of the shortfall is tax rather than the city.
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 Iowa income tax, you keep about $26,675. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $2,223 a month in Des Moines, which is $1,026 on a biweekly schedule or $513 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Des Moines it comes to $26,675 of take-home against a price level of 91.7, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $29,090 somewhere average. Local prices hand you back roughly $2,400 a year of buying power you wouldn't have somewhere average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $667 a month. A one-bedroom at Des Moines's fair market rent is $1,109, which is 50% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $442 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 Iowa state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.