
Illustration by Carlie Burton
Ten years ago, Cincinnati’s minimum wage workers made $8.10 an hour—$16,848 annually if working full-time. After work was done for the day, they drove to the store and picked up $102 worth of groceries for the week, filled up their gas tank for about $2.32 a gallon, and returned home to their apartment to settle in for the night—a one-bedroom they rented for $515 a month.
Today, that same worker makes $10.70 an hour, following a recent $0.25 minimum wage increase across Ohio, or $22,256 annually. Their average grocery bill is $136, gas runs about $3 a gallon, and rent totals $996 a month. While Ohio’s minimum wage has increased about 27 percent in the last decade, everyday expenses have soared even further.
Ohio is one of 13 states that adjusts its minimum wage based on inflation, determined by the Consumer Price Index, as opposed to sticking with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour (like other states, including Kentucky, do). The CPI measures the average change over time of the prices that consumers pay for goods and services, otherwise known as the cost of living.
According to David Brasington, a professor of economics at the University of Cincinnati,
Ohio is the 22nd most expensive state in the nation. Its cost of living is just below the national baseline index, 100, at 94.9, notably behind neighboring Indiana (91.3) and Kentucky (92.9). Its scores in all contributing categories rank lower than national averages across the board—groceries, utilities, transportation, health, entertainment, and especially housing.
In Cincinnati, though, the cost of living looks different from Ohio in general. The Queen City’s CPI, 97, is more than two points higher than Ohio’s overall index, the biggest difference of any city including more populous metros such as Cleveland (96.9) and Columbus (95.1).
Despite this, Brasington says that Cincinnati is not particularly high-cost in comparison to the rest of the country. “If Cincinnati were a state, it would be the 38th most expensive for housing costs,” he says, explaining that the median sale price for homes sits around $235,000—just higher than Ohio overall, which ranks 42nd for housing costs at $218,000. By comparison, median home sale prices in Northern Kentucky hit a recent high at $305,000—significantly up from $160,500 just six years ago.
By spending 40 percent of gross income, a full-time minimum wage worker can afford about $757 a month for rent. Units at that price are available across the city, particularly in Price Hill, Mt. Washington, Roselawn, and Over-the-Rhine. But affordable housing doesn’t come without other concessions—food deserts in areas like Price Hill drive up the cost of transportation to access nutritious meals, and rapid development has spiked housing and utility costs in some areas of Over-the-Rhine.
“Ohio’s minimum wage would barely keep a single parent with two kids slightly above the poverty level,” says Brasington. “You can tell me if that’s a comfortable life or not. The question is, how do we increase people’s wages?”
Recently, organizations such as One Fair Wage have fought for a $15 minimum wage in states across the U.S. Although OFW failed to garner enough signatures to add its measure to Ohio’s 2024 ballot, it has said it will try again in 2025.
Officials at the Ohio Chamber of Commerce argued that such a raise would increase prices for goods and services across the board— a sentiment that Brasington echoes for those that are especially labor-intensive. “It’s a one-size-fits-all solution,” he says. “People who kept their jobs would benefit a lot, because their incomes would increase significantly, but companies will try to cut back on labor and substitute it with technology…there would be fewer new hires and an increase in prices.”
Potential solutions may lie with local initiatives and agencies like the CityLink Center, and tax incentives. “It’s not a handout,” Brasington says. “It’s saying, OK, you have a job, we recognize that you might not be getting a very good-paying job, but we’re going to help with that.”
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