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Short answer: $31,200 a year, and this city is one of the harder places to make it work. 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 California income tax you keep $26,445, which is $2,204 a month or $1,017 every two weeks. Against Los Angeles prices running 13.6% above the national average, that spends like $23,279 would somewhere average.
The annual figure is the easy part: $15.00 an hour comes to $31,200 before tax. The hard part is that Los Angeles charges 13.6% more than the average American city for the things you'd spend it on.
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 |
| California state income tax | −$399 |
| CA disability insurance (SDI) | −$406 |
| Take-home pay | $26,445 |
| Take-home a month | $2,204 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $1,017 |
| Take-home a week | $509 |
| Take-home an hour | $12.71 |
| Adjusted for Los Angeles prices (13.6% above average) | $23,279 |
Tax takes $4,755 of that $31,200, or 15% of it. What's left is $26,445 a year, which is $2,204 a month, $1,017 every two weeks, or $509 a week.
Divided back down, that's $12.71 an hour after tax rather than $15.00. Worth knowing before you agree to overtime, because the take-home rate is the one that pays your bills.
That last row is the one nobody shows you. The federal government scores every metro against a national average of 100, and Los Angeles scores 113.6. Living here costs you roughly $3,200 a year of buying power before you've bought anything, purely for buying it here.
Nobody gets to opt out of this one.
California takes about $399 a year at this wage, an effective rate of 1.3% once brackets, deductions and exemptions have all been applied. On a weekly check that's roughly $8.
That sits on top of federal tax and Social Security and Medicare, which between them explain most of the gap between the rate on your schedule and the number on your check.
A one-bedroom at Los Angeles's fair market rent runs $2,085 a month, $2,601 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $2,204 a month, the one-bedroom eats 95% 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 $119 a month for everything else, and that's before a car or childcare.
Los Angeles being 14% above average is a blended figure, and blending is exactly what you don't want here. Groceries and everyday goods run 7% above average. Housing runs 70% above it.
Which means the cost of living here is mostly the cost of being housed here. Everything else is close to ordinary.
One more to budget for: utilities here run 59% above average, which is the bill people consistently underestimate when they move.
Los Angeles has bounced between 110.2 and 114.7 over 2008 to 2024 without settling into a direction.
Which is a reminder that this index moves. A figure quoted confidently from any single year, including this one, is a snapshot rather than a trend.
And it has not dipped below the national average once in that entire stretch.
The useful version of this question is the reverse one. Matching what $15.00 an hour buys nationally takes $17.04 an hour in Los Angeles.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $2,085 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $56.71 an hour, which is $41.71 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $86,755 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles, CA | 113.6 | $2,204 | $23,279 |
| Chicago, IL | 103.6 | $2,154 | $24,951 |
| Miami, FL | 114.2 | $2,271 | $23,861 |
| San Francisco, CA | 115.6 | $2,204 | $22,876 |
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 $23,279 of real purchasing power in Los Angeles, and about $3,200 of that shortfall is the city rather than the tax code.
It's doable with roommates or a second earner. On its own, against a full-time schedule, it doesn't leave a margin for the month going wrong.
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 California income tax, you keep about $26,445. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $2,204 a month in Los Angeles, which is $1,017 on a biweekly schedule or $509 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Los Angeles it comes to $26,445 of take-home against a price level of 113.6, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $23,279 somewhere average. The price premium costs you roughly $3,200 a year against the national average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $661 a month. A one-bedroom at Los Angeles's fair market rent is $2,085, which is 95% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $1,424 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 California state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.