2025 Living Income Standard: The cost of meeting the basics across North Carolina
In every county in North Carolina, people want to meet basic needs for themselves and their children without stress. To build an economy that works for everyone and not just the wealthy few, we need to understand what it actually takes to meet those needs. Approximately every two years, we calculate a Living Income Standard (LIS) for a variety of family types in all 100 counties, along with a statewide average. Our 2025 LIS is now available on our new dashboard:
Relying on official federal and state data sources, the LIS calculates the cost of living based on eight household necessities: food, housing, child care, health care, transportation, miscellaneous costs, savings, and taxes. The result is a modest family budget that leaves little room for emergencies, and nothing for leisure activities. For the first time, we included a very small amount for savings, just to allow a family to save enough for one month of income at 150 percent of the federal poverty level. To learn more about the data and methods that go into the LIS, view our methodology here.
What it takes to make ends meet in NC
Not surprisingly, the Living Income Standard has grown considerably since we last updated it in mid-2022. We know that supply shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine, along with corporate greedflation, led to increased costs that have hit families in North Carolina and across the country hard. And without sustained public investment in increasing the availability of affordable housing and child care, these costs continue to be the biggest ones for families with young kids. We find that on average, the LIS for a family of two parents and two children in North Carolina is about $8,100 per month, or $97,500 per year.
The LIS varies considerably not only by family types but also by geography. For a family of four, the annual LIS ranges from just over $77,000 in Halifax County to nearly $113,000 in Union County.
The LIS shows that both the poverty level and minimum wage are woefully inadequate
The LIS shows that the federal poverty level remains totally out of sync with what it costs to support a family. And it also drives home that the state minimum wage — which is the same as the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour — is in fact a poverty wage. At $7.25 per hour, full-time work leaves many families under the federal poverty level. A family of two parents and two kids would earn $30,160 annually if both adults worked full-time at minimum wage, while the federal poverty level for that family is slightly higher, at $31,200.
In many cases, it’s literally impossible to earn the Living Income Standard while being paid minimum wage because there simply aren’t enough hours in a week. There are 168 hours in a week, but in North Carolina a single parent with one child would need to work 200 hours each week to make the statewide average LIS at minimum wage.
The table below shows that for families with kids, the statewide average hourly wage needed to meet the LIS ranges from $23.40 to $42.20.
| Family Type | Hourly Wage Per Adult to meet the LIS | Monthly LIS | Annual LIS |
| One adult with one child | $36.30 | $6,290 | $75,470 |
| One adult with two children | $42.20 | $7,310 | $87,700 |
| Two adults with two children | $23.40 | $8,130 | $97,550 |
| Two adults with three children | $26.70 | $9,240 | $110,880 |
Even for people without kids in counties with the lowest costs in the state, full-time work at minimum wage pays about half of the LIS. Our analysis shows that the lowest LIS for a single adult is in Halifax County — but it still requires an hourly wage of nearly $15 per hour.
LIS underscores the need to build an economy for all
The LIS is about covering the basics, not what it takes to create real economic security and thriving. In our analysis we make conservative choices to produce a basic standard for covering the cost of necessities — but not enough to save for college costs, take a vacation, or celebrate with an occasional meal in a restaurant.
Our goal in creating a benchmark for basic income is for this tool to be useful for workers fighting for fair wages and for North Carolinians coming together to demand public investments that will make needs like child care more affordable. In the coming months we plan to release additional data visualization and analysis comparing the LIS across counties — we’d love to hear from you if you have ideas about how we can make this data most useful to you and your community!
