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Before anything else: $37,440 a year before tax, and here that's a stretch. Here's what's left after tax and what rent does to it.
$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 Miami prices running 14.2% above the national average, that spends like $28,251 would somewhere average.
You can work out $37,440 from $18.00 an hour on a phone calculator. What you can't work out that way is what Miami does to it, which starts with prices 14.2% above average.
Which is what the rest of this page works 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) | $37,440 |
| Federal income tax | −$2,313 |
| Social Security and Medicare | −$2,864 |
| Florida 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 Miami prices (14.2% above average) | $28,251 |
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 Miami scores 114.2. Living here costs you roughly $4,000 a year of buying power before you've bought anything, purely for buying it here.
Florida's zero income tax is real money. It just isn't enough money.
Florida charges no personal income tax, worth roughly $1,100 a year at this wage compared with a typical taxing state.
It sounds like it should settle the question. It doesn't, because the price premium runs about 3.7 times larger than the saving.
A one-bedroom at Miami's fair market rent runs $1,995 a month, $2,436 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $2,689 a month, the one-bedroom eats 74% 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 $694 a month for everything else, and that's before a car or childcare.
Miami being 14% above average is a blended figure, and blending is exactly what you don't want here. Groceries and everyday goods run 4% above average. Housing runs 56% above it.
That's a very different problem from "everything is expensive." One line on your budget absorbs almost the whole difference, and it's the one you can't opt out of.
Miami has climbed 7.7 index points across 2008 to 2024, and it's sitting at or near its high right now.
Which means the number you need here has been rising, and there's nothing in the series suggesting it has stopped.
And it has not dipped below the national average once in that entire stretch.
Flip it: $20.56 an hour here puts you where $18.00 an hour puts someone in an average-priced city.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $1,995 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $48.50 an hour, which is $30.50 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $63,441 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miami, FL | 114.2 | $2,689 | $28,251 |
| Denver, CO | 105.8 | $2,610 | $29,607 |
| Los Angeles, CA | 113.6 | $2,595 | $27,415 |
| San Francisco, CA | 115.6 | $2,595 | $26,940 |
Your pay, your two cities, real federal price data. It takes about fifteen seconds.
Compare my citiesHonestly, it's a stretch. $18.00 an hour leaves $28,251 of real purchasing power in Miami, and about $4,000 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 $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 Miami, 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 Miami it comes to $32,263 of take-home against a price level of 114.2, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $28,251 somewhere average. The price premium costs you roughly $4,000 a year against the national average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $807 a month. A one-bedroom at Miami's fair market rent is $1,995, which is 74% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $1,188 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.