Loading...
The figure people want: $37,440 a year before tax, and it's tighter here than that sounds. Here's the full breakdown, per hour, per week, per month.
$18.00 an hour is $37,440 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare you keep $32,263, which is $2,689 a month or $1,241 every two weeks. Against Las Vegas prices running 0.2% above the national average, that spends like $32,199 would somewhere average.
Las Vegas is close enough to the national average on prices that the answer here comes down to what the tax code takes. $18.00 an hour is $37,440 a year before it does.
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) | $37,440 |
| Federal income tax | −$2,313 |
| Social Security and Medicare | −$2,864 |
| Nevada state income tax | $0 |
| Take-home pay | $32,263 |
| Take-home a month | $2,689 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $1,241 |
| Take-home a week | $620 |
| Take-home an hour | $15.51 |
| Adjusted for Las Vegas prices (0.2% above average) | $32,199 |
Tax takes $5,177 of that $37,440, or 14% of it. What's left is $32,263 a year, which is $2,689 a month, $1,241 every two weeks, or $620 a week.
So the honest hourly figure is $15.51, not $18.00. 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 Las Vegas scores 100.2. Living here costs you roughly $100 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.
Nevada charges no personal income tax, worth roughly $1,100 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 Las Vegas's fair market rent runs $1,478 a month, $1,735 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $2,689 a month, the one-bedroom eats 55% 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 $1,211 a month for everything else, and that's before a car or childcare.
The headline figure averages over things that behave differently. In Las Vegas the spread runs from rent and housing, 16% above the national average, down to utilities at 9% 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.
Las Vegas peaked in 2009 at 104.2 and has been coming back down since. It now sits 4 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.
Turn it around and it runs in your favour. Matching what $18.00 an hour buys nationally only takes $18.04 an hour in Las Vegas.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $1,478 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $34.37 an hour, which is $16.37 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $34,045 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Las Vegas, NV | 100.2 | $2,689 | $32,199 |
| Memphis, TN | 92.2 | $2,689 | $34,992 |
| Detroit, MI | 100.3 | $2,577 | $30,830 |
| Denver, CO | 105.8 | $2,610 | $29,607 |
Your pay, your two cities, real federal price data. It takes about fifteen seconds.
Compare my citiesIt's tight. $18.00 an hour in Las Vegas holds $32,199 of real purchasing power once tax and local prices have both taken their turn, so roughly $5,200 a year is gone before you buy anything.
About $100 of that is Las Vegas specifically. You'd keep it earning the identical wage somewhere priced at the national average.
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 $37,440 a year at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. After federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, you keep about $32,263. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $2,689 a month in Las Vegas, which is $1,241 on a biweekly schedule or $620 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Las Vegas it comes to $32,263 of take-home against a price level of 100.2, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $32,199 somewhere average. The price premium costs you roughly $100 a year against the national average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $807 a month. A one-bedroom at Las Vegas's fair market rent is $1,478, which is 55% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $671 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 Nevada state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.