MB Drive student Toi Clark secures the driver’s seat rails in a C300 Mercedes-Benz at the manufacturer’s mechanic training facility on July 15, 2025, in Grapevine.
Angela Piazza/Staff Photographer
If you’re a single 20- or 30-something in Dallas County, you need about $48,500 a year before taxes to cover basic needs, MIT’s Living Wage Institute estimates.
That works out to roughly $23.31 an hour in 2026 for full-time work. For a two-adult household with two children, the institute says each parent needs to earn about $25.78 an hour to hit a similar bare-bones standard of living.
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However, many residents do not earn that much. The Dallas-based Commit Partnership nonprofit has bolstered initiatives aimed at ensuring at least half of all 25‑ to 34‑year‑old Dallas County residents earn a living wage by 2040. (Commit supports The Future of North Texas initiative at The Dallas Morning News).
The young adults who will be in that group are currently between about fifth grade and their sophomore year of college. That pushes attention onto classrooms, advising offices and short‑term training programs, not just the job market.
New research from Commit shows that living‑wage attainment among young adults has inched up for seven straight years. But fewer than one in three are hitting the bar, and racial gaps remain stark.
MIT’s 2026 living-wage figures ticked up slightly from last year. However in 2025, a single adult in Dallas County needed to earn $23.06 an hour. For a two-parent family of four, the estimate nudged up from $25.69 per adult. For a single parent with one child, the newest estimate is $37.90 or $78,832, compared with $37.97 in 2025 or about $78,977.
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A few trends kept the 2026 living wage figures from being even higher. Falling transportation and health care costs were largely offset by modest increases in housing, food and child care, data manager Misael Galdámez said.
Those numbers may be jarring to residents who feel squeezed by rent, grocery, child care and insurance bills, and who regularly see headlines about affordability crises.
With millions of people projected to move to North Texas by 2050, educators and public officials are working with businesses and nonprofits to bolster skills among residents and address persistent poverty. Education and workforce advocates say short-term training programs, including free programs for high school students and college courses for older workers, can help people obtain the certifications needed to make more money.
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That matters because 63% of jobs statewide will require education beyond high school by 2031, according to a Georgetown University report.
The expenses pattern in Dallas is consistent with a broader trend the MIT institute described in a recent webinar. Child care, health care and housing have been the biggest drivers of family cost growth since the pandemic, with transportation swinging more in response to market conditions.
Compared with other large Texas metros, Galdámez said, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth and El Paso absorbed large housing surges earlier in the decade and costs are now stabilizing. In contrast, Houston, San Antonio, Amarillo and Lubbock are in a group of cities where everyday expenses have risen slowly but consistently in recent years, even as the official living wage estimate dipped slightly in 2026.
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But most young adults in Dallas County are not earning a living wage. Commit found that the share of 25- to 34-year-olds in Dallas County earning at or above a living wage rose from 30.65% in 2023 to 31.45% in 2024, a modest gain amid a seventh straight year of growth in this metric. The county is nearly five percentage points above the statewide average of approximately 27% and has doubled the state rate of growth.
MIT’s Dallas figures show what it costs different types of households to cover basics, including a single adult and a two‑parent family of four. Commit’s young‑adult living wage metric, by contrast, uses a single benchmark for a one‑adult, one‑child family and then looks at each 25‑ to 34‑year‑old’s individual earnings to see who clears that bar.
Commit uses a living wage threshold of $62,407 for a one‑adult, one‑child family, based on inflation‑adjusted figures tied to the most recent year of Census data in 2024.
Measured against that line, Commit reports only 22% of Black and 18% of Hispanic young adults in the county earn at or above that threshold, compared with 52% of white young adults. These disparities are larger than the statewide averages, Commit noted.
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Commit President Miguel Solis has framed the numbers as both encouraging and sobering. In Commit’s March 11 report, he said they are encouraged to see more young adults earning a living wage, but far too many are not yet fully participating in the region’s prosperity.
“If we want Dallas County to thrive, we must ensure that opportunity is not predicted by race, place or socioeconomic status,” Solis said.
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Bolstering the odds of success for residents requires investments into child care and college and career advising in high school, according to Commit’s report. Dallas County districts and colleges are working to expand early childhood seats, Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P‑TECH, and Career Institute pathways, as well as short‑term credential programs aimed to move more students and older workers into jobs above the living‑wage line.
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Local and state leaders also expanded access to early childhood education and college and career readiness in recent years. According to Commit, that work has coincided with growth in living wage attainment and a drop in the young adult poverty rate in Dallas County from roughly 18% to about 11%.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.