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Put annually: $62,400 a year before tax, and it's a living rather than a cushion. Here's what's left after tax and what rent does to it.
$30.00 an hour is $62,400 a year gross at 40 hours a week. After federal tax, Social Security and Medicare you keep $52,318, which is $4,360 a month or $2,012 every two weeks. Against Tampa prices running 0.9% above the national average, that spends like $51,852 would somewhere average.
Tampa is close enough to the national average on prices that the answer here comes down to what the tax code takes. $30.00 an hour is $62,400 a year before it does.
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) | $62,400 |
| Federal income tax | −$5,308 |
| Social Security and Medicare | −$4,774 |
| Florida state income tax | $0 |
| Take-home pay | $52,318 |
| Take-home a month | $4,360 |
| Take-home every two weeks | $2,012 |
| Take-home a week | $1,006 |
| Take-home an hour | $25.15 |
| Adjusted for Tampa prices (0.9% above average) | $51,852 |
Tax takes $10,082 of that $62,400, or 16% of it. What's left is $52,318 a year, which is $4,360 a month, $2,012 every two weeks, or $1,006 a week.
So the honest hourly figure is $25.15, not $30.00. 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 Tampa scores 100.9. Living here costs you roughly $500 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 $2,200 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 $4,360 a month, the one-bedroom eats 39% of it.
That's over the 30% line, which puts you in what housing researchers call cost-burdened. It leaves $2,664 a month for food, transport, insurance, and anything you might want to save.
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.
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.
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.
That crossing is why Tampa gets described as both cheap and expensive depending on who you ask and when they last looked.
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.
Reversed, it's good news: $30.27 an hour here matches $30.00 an hour in an average-priced city.
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 $10.33 an hour more than you're on. Full time, that gap is $21,481 a year.
| Metro | Price level100 = US avg | Take-home a month | Real value a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tampa, FL | 100.9 | $4,360 | $51,852 |
| Kansas City, MO | 92.5 | $4,194 | $54,403 |
| Orlando, FL | 101.4 | $4,360 | $51,596 |
| Seattle, WA | 111.1 | $4,360 | $47,091 |
Your pay, your two cities, real federal price data. It takes about fifteen seconds.
Compare my citiesIt works. $30.00 an hour converts to $51,852 of real spending power in Tampa, which covers a normal month for one person without much drama.
It'll pay rent, food and a car, and it won't build much of a cushion behind them. Both of those are true at once.
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 $62,400 a year at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. After federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, you keep about $52,318. That's a single filer taking the standard deduction under 2026 rates.
About $4,360 a month in Tampa, which is $2,012 on a biweekly schedule or $1,006 a week. Your actual check depends on hours worked, benefit deductions and what you claimed on your W-4.
In Tampa it comes to $52,318 of take-home against a price level of 100.9, where 100 is the national average. That's the same buying power as $51,852 somewhere average. The price premium costs you roughly $500 a year against the national average.
At the standard 30% of take-home, $1,308 a month. A one-bedroom at Tampa's fair market rent is $1,696, which is 39% of your monthly take-home, so you'd be over the line by $388 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.