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Maine Children's Alliance

Estimated Living Wage, 2018 & 2020, Economic Policy Institute in Maine

Change Indicator

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Why This Indicator Matters

Families thrive when their income is adequate to meet basic living expenses. Both the official federal poverty line and the newer supplemental poverty measure are lower than what is needed for families to meet all of their basic needs without income supports.

What the data shows
In Maine, in 2020, the estimated hourly wage for one parent to support themselves and one child varies between a high of $34.79 in Cumberland County to a low of $24.86 in Franklin County. There is a substantial gap between wages of full time work and the amount necessary for a family to feel like they are getting by in every county in Maine.
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Data Provided By

Definitions: EPI's Family Budget Calculator measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living. The budget estimate shown here is for one parent and one child for the counties in Maine. The annual total is divided by 2,080 to get an hourly rate. For more info on how each part of the budget is calculated for housing, food, child care, transportation, health care and other necessities, see methodology for family budget

Data Source: Economic Policy Institute Family Budget Calculator. The values for the Maine counties are from the EPI website and the 2018 values are from data sent by EPI directly to Maine Children's Alliance, March 2022. The computations from annual amounts to living wages were done by Maine Children's Alliance, not by EPI.

Footnotes: The state value is the median of the counties. EPI did not compute a state value because of the substantial variation in family budgets at the county level.

Uploaded September 2022.