Inflation has been a high-pressure issue for Americans since the outbreak of COVID-19 — and despite being long out of lockdown, consumers continue to shop strategically as the cost of living rises. With rising prices, is it possible to find entry-level jobs that pay a living wage in the United States?

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By August 2024, consumer prices remained 22% above pre-COVID levels, and the majority of Americans were “very concerned” about the price of food and goods. And inflation has continued to rise well into 2025, leading American families to further tighten the purse strings. 

But how your home budget adds up can depend very much on the prices and wage levels where you live. To help you picture this, NetCredit created a cost of living calculator. They also compared local entry-level job wages to local costs of living using MIT’s Living Wage Calculator and ranked states and cities based on the percentage of job ads offering salaries above the local living wage. So, which cities are the best and worst when it comes to entry-level jobs that pay a living wage?

 Key Findings 

● Minnesota is the best state to earn a living wage, with 92.25% of entry-level jobs meeting the local living wage of $44,100. 

● In Hawaii, just 19.20% of entry-level jobs offer a living wage ($59,840). 

● Every entry-level job (100%) in Bakersfield, Calif., meets the local living wage — the only major U.S. city where this is the case. 

● In Honolulu, Hawaii, only 27.69% of new job listings offer a living wage. 

NetCredit ranked states and cities based on the percentage of job ads that offered salaries above the local living wage. 

To define the living wage by location, the team found the cost of living for one adult (without children) by metro area and state using MIT’s Living Wage Calculator: https://livingwage.mit.edu/. They identified the 100 most populous cities in the U.S. (and the most populous by state) and then mapped the cities to their corresponding metro areas. 

The NetCredit team then used Indeed.com to find the number of new entry-level jobs in each location, using the filters to isolate only full-time, entry-level jobs posted in the past week. This allowed them to compare the percentage of entry-level jobs in each location that met the local living wage as defined above. 

This data analysis was completed in February 2025.