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Put annually: $52,000 gross, which covers the month without covering much else. Here's what's left after tax and what rent does to it.
$25.00 an hour is $52,000 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare, and Arizona income tax you keep $42,871, which is $3,573 a month or $1,649 every two weeks. Against Tucson prices running 3.1% below the national average, that spends like $44,242 would somewhere average.
$25.00 an hour is $52,000 a year, and Tucson runs 3.1% under the national average on prices. That gap doesn't get talked about much and it's felt every month.
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) | $52,000 |
| Federal income tax | −$4,060 |
| Social Security and Medicare | −$3,978 |
| Arizona state income tax | −$1,091 |
| Take-home pay | $42,871 |
| Take-home a month | $3,573 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $1,649 |
| Take-home a week | $824 |
| Take-home an hour | $20.61 |
| Adjusted for Tucson prices (3.1% below average) | $44,242 |
Tax takes $9,129 of that $52,000, or 18% of it. What's left is $42,871 a year, which is $3,573 a month, $1,649 every two weeks, or $824 a week.
Put another way, your $25.00 an hour is really $20.61 an hour once withholding is done. That's the number to use when you're deciding whether an extra shift is worth it.
That last row is the one nobody shows you. The federal government scores every metro against a national average of 100, and Tucson scores 96.9. Living here hands you back roughly $1,400 a year of buying power you wouldn't have somewhere average.
State tax is the line people forget until the first check lands.
Arizona takes about $1,091 a year at this wage, an effective rate of 2.1% once brackets, deductions and exemptions have all been applied. On a weekly check that's roughly $21.
Federal tax and FICA come off the same money, which is why multiplying hours by your rate always overshoots what arrives.
A one-bedroom at Tucson's fair market rent runs $1,081 a month, $1,402 for a two-bedroom. Against take-home of $3,573 a month, the one-bedroom eats 30% of it.
That lands right on the 30% rule, the traditional line for affordable. It works, and it leaves $2,492 a month for everything else, which is enough but not generous.
Tucson 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.
Tucson peaked in 2012 at 100.6 and has been coming back down since. It now sits 3.7 index points below that high.
That matters more than it sounds. Anyone quoting you a Tucson cost-of-living figure from a few years ago is quoting the peak, and the peak is not where things are.
Worth noting that the recent direction is the opposite one. It has gained 1.6 points in the last five years, so the longer trend is not the one you'd be moving into.
Reversed, it's good news: $24.23 an hour here matches $25.00 an hour in an average-priced city.
And rent already works at this wage. A one-bedroom at $1,081 a month hits the 30% line at about $25.23 an hour, which you're already past.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tucson, AZ | 96.9 | $3,573 | $44,242 |
| Wichita, KS | 88.9 | $3,488 | $47,087 |
| Milwaukee, WI | 96.9 | $3,524 | $43,640 |
| Philadelphia, PA | 102.6 | $3,530 | $41,292 |
Your pay, your two cities, real federal price data. It takes about fifteen seconds.
Compare my citiesIt works. $25.00 an hour converts to $44,242 of real spending power in Tucson, which covers a normal month for one person without much drama.
Fine for one, workable for two if both of you earn, and thin the moment anything unplanned lands.
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 $52,000 a year at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. After federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, and Arizona income tax, you keep about $42,871. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $3,573 a month in Tucson, which is $1,649 on a biweekly schedule or $824 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Tucson it comes to $42,871 of take-home against a price level of 96.9, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $44,242 somewhere average. Local prices hand you back roughly $1,400 a year of buying power you wouldn't have somewhere average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $1,072 a month. A one-bedroom at Tucson's fair market rent is $1,081, which is 30% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $9 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 Arizona state rates. The data vintage is shown on every page.