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Before anything else: $35,360 a year, and this city is one of the harder places to make it work. Here's the full breakdown, per hour, per week, per month.
$17.00 an hour is $35,360 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare you keep $30,592, which is $2,549 a month or $1,177 every two weeks. Against Tampa prices running 0.9% above the national average, that spends like $30,319 would somewhere average.
Full time at $17.00 an hour comes to $35,360, and Tampa prices land within a whisker of the national average. So this one turns almost entirely on tax rather than geography.
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) | $35,360 |
| Federal income tax | −$2,063 |
| Social Security and Medicare | −$2,705 |
| Florida state income tax | $0 |
| Take-home pay | $30,592 |
| Take-home a month | $2,549 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $1,177 |
| Take-home a week | $588 |
| Take-home an hour | $14.71 |
| Adjusted for Tampa prices (0.9% above average) | $30,319 |
Tax takes $4,768 of that $35,360, or 13% of it. What's left is $30,592 a year, which is $2,549 a month, $1,177 every two weeks, or $588 a week.
Divided back down, that's $14.71 an hour after tax rather than $17.00. 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 Tampa scores 100.9. Living here costs you roughly $300 a year of buying power before you've bought anything, purely for buying it here.
The missing income tax more than covers the price difference here, which doesn't happen often.
Florida charges no personal income tax, worth roughly $1,000 a year at this wage against a typical taxing state.
And here it genuinely wins. What you keep in tax outweighs what local prices cost you, which is the combination people assume they're getting whenever they move somewhere tax-free and usually aren't.
A one-bedroom at Tampa's fair market rent runs $1,696 a month, $1,977 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $2,549 a month, the one-bedroom eats 67% 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 $853 a month for everything else, and that's before a car or childcare.
Tampa being 1% above average is a blended figure, and blending is exactly what you don't want here. Groceries and everyday goods run 5% below average. Housing runs 26% above it.
Which means the cost of living here is mostly the cost of being housed here. Everything else is close to ordinary.
Tampa has been on both sides of the national average. It spent 11 of the last 17 years above it, and it's above it now at 100.9.
Cities that hover near the average are the ones where general advice is least useful. A few index points either way changes the answer, and Tampa has moved a few index points repeatedly.
Worth noting that the recent direction is the opposite one. It has gained 4.4 points in the last five years, so the longer trend is not the one you'd be moving into.
Turn it around and it runs in your favour. Matching what $17.00 an hour buys nationally only takes $17.15 an hour in Tampa.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $1,696 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $40.33 an hour, which is $23.33 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $48,521 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tampa, FL | 100.9 | $2,549 | $30,319 |
| Kansas City, MO | 92.5 | $2,489 | $32,289 |
| Orlando, FL | 101.4 | $2,549 | $30,169 |
| Seattle, WA | 111.1 | $2,549 | $27,535 |
Your pay, your two cities, real federal price data. It takes about fifteen seconds.
Compare my citiesHonestly, it's a stretch. $17.00 an hour leaves $30,319 of real purchasing power in Tampa, and about $300 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 $35,360 a year at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. After federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, you keep about $30,592. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $2,549 a month in Tampa, which is $1,177 on a biweekly schedule or $588 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Tampa it comes to $30,592 of take-home against a price level of 100.9, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $30,319 somewhere average. The price premium costs you roughly $300 a year against the national average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $765 a month. A one-bedroom at Tampa's fair market rent is $1,696, which is 67% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $931 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 Florida state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.