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Straight to it: $31,200 a year before tax, and here that's a stretch. Here's what actually lands in the account, and what it buys locally.
$15.00 an hour is $31,200 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare, and Rhode Island income tax you keep $26,696, which is $2,225 a month or $1,027 every two weeks. Against Providence prices running 1.8% above the national average, that spends like $26,224 would somewhere average.
Providence is close enough to the national average on prices that the answer here comes down to what the tax code takes. $15.00 an hour is $31,200 a year before it does.
So here it is properly, with the tax taken out.
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 |
| Rhode Island state income tax | −$553 |
| Take-home pay | $26,696 |
| Take-home a month | $2,225 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $1,027 |
| Take-home a week | $513 |
| Take-home an hour | $12.83 |
| Adjusted for Providence prices (1.8% above average) | $26,224 |
Tax takes $4,504 of that $31,200, or 14% of it. What's left is $26,696 a year, which is $2,225 a month, $1,027 every two weeks, or $513 a week.
So the honest hourly figure is $12.83, 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 Providence scores 101.8. Living here costs you roughly $500 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.
Rhode Island takes about $553 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 Providence's fair market rent runs $1,402 a month, $1,729 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $2,225 a month, the one-bedroom eats 63% 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 $823 a month for everything else, and that's before a car or childcare.
The headline figure averages over things that behave differently. In Providence the spread runs from utilities, 49% above the national average, down to groceries and goods at 3% 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.
One more to budget for: utilities here run 49% above average, which is the bill people consistently underestimate when they move.
Providence peaked in 2009 at 103.8 and has been coming back down since. It now sits 2 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.
Reversed, it's good news: $15.27 an hour here matches $15.00 an hour in an average-priced city.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $1,402 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $33.66 an hour, which is $18.66 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $38,820 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Providence, RI | 101.8 | $2,225 | $26,224 |
| Louisville, KY | 93.1 | $2,190 | $28,222 |
| Orlando, FL | 101.4 | $2,271 | $26,873 |
| 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 $26,224 of real purchasing power in Providence, and about $500 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 Rhode Island income tax, you keep about $26,696. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $2,225 a month in Providence, which is $1,027 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 Providence it comes to $26,696 of take-home against a price level of 101.8, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $26,224 somewhere average. The price premium costs you roughly $500 a year against the national average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $667 a month. A one-bedroom at Providence's fair market rent is $1,402, which is 63% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $735 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 Rhode Island state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.