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The figure people want: $45,760 a year, stretched thin, though this is one of the better places to stretch it. Here's what actually lands in the account, and what it buys locally.
$22.00 an hour is $45,760 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare you keep $38,948, which is $3,246 a month or $1,498 every two weeks. Against Houston prices running 1.4% below the national average, that spends like $39,501 would somewhere average.
Full time at $22.00 an hour comes to $45,760, and Houston prices land within a whisker of the national average. So this one turns almost entirely on tax rather than geography.
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) | $45,760 |
| Federal income tax | −$3,311 |
| Social Security and Medicare | −$3,501 |
| Texas state income tax | $0 |
| Take-home pay | $38,948 |
| Take-home a month | $3,246 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $1,498 |
| Take-home a week | $749 |
| Take-home an hour | $18.73 |
| Adjusted for Houston prices (1.4% below average) | $39,501 |
Tax takes $6,812 of that $45,760, or 15% of it. What's left is $38,948 a year, which is $3,246 a month, $1,498 every two weeks, or $749 a week.
Divided back down, that's $18.73 an hour after tax rather than $22.00. 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 Houston scores 98.6. Living here hands you back roughly $600 a year of buying power you wouldn't have somewhere average.
The missing income tax more than covers the price difference here, which doesn't happen often.
Texas charges no personal income tax, worth roughly $1,400 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 Houston's fair market rent runs $1,323 a month, $1,573 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $3,246 a month, the one-bedroom eats 41% of it.
That's over the 30% line, which puts you in what housing researchers call cost-burdened. It leaves $1,923 a month for food, transport, insurance, and anything you might want to save.
Houston is unusually even. Housing, goods, utilities and services all sit within a few points of each other, so there's no single line that ambushes you.
That makes it easy to plan for. Whatever the headline figure says, it applies fairly evenly across what you actually buy.
Houston peaked in 2015 at 103.1 and has been coming back down since. It now sits 4.5 index points below that high.
So the received wisdom about Houston is running a few years behind the data. The city is cheaper, relative to the rest of the country, than its reputation.
Most of that shift is recent: 2.8 points of it landed in the last five years.
Reversed, it's good news: $21.69 an hour here matches $22.00 an hour in an average-priced city.
And here's the rent version of the same sum. A one-bedroom at $1,323 a month sits at 30% of take-home only once you're earning about $30.36 an hour, which is $8.36 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $17,389 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houston, TX | 98.6 | $3,246 | $39,501 |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 90.4 | $3,120 | $41,410 |
| Austin, TX | 98.1 | $3,246 | $39,703 |
| Chicago, IL | 103.6 | $3,069 | $35,548 |
Your pay, your two cities, real federal price data. It takes about fifteen seconds.
Compare my citiesIt's tight. $22.00 an hour in Houston holds $39,501 of real purchasing power once tax and local prices have both taken their turn, so roughly $6,300 a year is gone before you buy anything.
Nearly all of that is tax rather than Houston. Local prices are already working for you here, which is why this reads as tight rather than worse.
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 $45,760 a year at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. After federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, you keep about $38,948. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $3,246 a month in Houston, which is $1,498 on a biweekly schedule or $749 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Houston it comes to $38,948 of take-home against a price level of 98.6, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $39,501 somewhere average. Local prices hand you back roughly $600 a year of buying power you wouldn't have somewhere average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $974 a month. A one-bedroom at Houston's fair market rent is $1,323, which is 41% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $349 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 Texas state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.