Memphis Is Comfortable at $60,000 But Can Young People Get There?

By Sherika Trott Bailey
Her energy is just so chill, she wanna live delightfully.

Tom Jones recently made a compelling case for Memphis: if you earn $60,000 there, your money can buy considerably more than it would in Boston, New York, Miami or Los Angeles.

I believe him. But I got stuck one step earlier: Can the ordinary young Memphian actually earn the $60,000?

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data almost make Tom’s number look perfect. The average Memphis metro wage is $28.96 an hour, about $60,200 a year full-time. But the median worker earns only about $46,900. The worker standing in the middle is more than $13,000 short of the salary being used to show how comfortable Memphis can be.

The jobs Memphis has the most of reinforce the point. Transportation and material-moving jobs average about $49,500 a year; office support about $49,500; sales $47,900; production $48,100; and food service $31,800. Together, those groups represent more than half of metro employment.

The household picture is no prettier. Memphis’s 2024 median household income was $52,679, while mean household income was $79,342. The top 20% of households receive about 55% of household income; the bottom 40% receive only about 10%. The average can look healthy while the middle tells another story.

And Memphis is young. Its median age is 34.8, and roughly half the city is under 35. About one in five Memphians ages 18 to 34 lives below the poverty line. These are people deciding where adulthood will happen.

This is where our family’s Abundance Theory becomes useful. It measures wealth by the useful life, capability, security, productive capacity and human time a system creates and preserves. It asks: What life can the income people can actually reach produce?

Can the young person earn the comfortable $60,000?
Can two people live on it?
Can they have children?
Can one parent step away from paid work for pregnancy, birth or care without the household falling apart?
Can both parents work without childcare swallowing a large part of the second income?
Can their children receive an education that leads somewhere useful?
Can they see themselves becoming more here?
Can they imagine their children having a better future here?

Now put Memphis through that test.

For one adult, $60,000 can be fairly comfortable. MIT’s 2026 basic-needs estimate is about $43,900. Turn one person into two adults living on one income and it rises to about $59,900. Add one child and it rises to $70,800. If both parents work with one child, the combined requirement is about $81,400. These are basic-needs estimates, not luxury.

Shelby County child-care data put annual infant care at about $11,527 and toddler care at $10,920. Two small children can consume more than $22,000 a year simply so both parents can keep working. This is the kind of household burden our wider family work examines.

Housing tells the same story. Memphis may be cheap compared with New York, but about 55.7% of Memphis renters are housing-cost burdened, spending at least 30% of household income on housing. Cheap compared with another city is not the same as affordable on Memphis wages.

Then education. Median earnings are about $34,000 for high-school graduates, $39,000 for people with some college or an associate degree, and about $53,000 even for bachelor’s-degree holders. The median does not cross $60,000 until the graduate or professional-degree level.

The pathway starts with a school system still struggling. Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ March 2026 scorecard showed 20.5% proficiency in grades 3–12 English, 27.04% in math and 21.9% in science. Meanwhile, about 35.7% of Memphis children live below the poverty line. That is an extraordinary number to place beside the word affordable.

Crime is moving strongly in the right direction. Memphis Police reported Part I crime down 27% in 2025 and another 36% year-to-date through the second quarter of 2026. Memphis deserves credit. But it is climbing down from an exceptionally high level of violence. Reducing danger is only half the job.

A city has to give young people something to move toward, not merely less to run away from.

Young Memphians are saying this themselves. This year, a 17-year-old told local television she felt she had to leave because of the environment. A Shelby County Youth Council member called for trades, career preparation and opportunities young people actually want, saying those opportunities could make them want to stay.

Then there is GloRilla. She grew up in Memphis. After success allowed her to travel and see more of the world, she said: “There’s nothing to do there, that’s why everybody be acting crazy.” I would not use GloRilla as an economist. I would listen to her as a young Memphian.

Memphis possesses something many aging places would desperately like to have: young people. Their businesses have not been started. Their children have not been born. Their music has not been written. Decades of their contribution are ahead. That is wealth.

Young people do not merely compare rents. They compare futures.

So yes, Memphis may be a remarkably comfortable place to spend $60,000. But if the ordinary young Memphian cannot reach it, if it barely covers two adults, falls short once a child arrives, and sits inside housing burden, weak educational outcomes and limited high-paying pathways, why are we surprised when young people leave?

The better question is not simply How far does $60,000 go here? It is: Can a young person build an entire life here and still believe the best part is ahead?

Source note
Figures draw on BLS, U.S. Census, MIT Living Wage Calculator, Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Memphis Police, and cited local reporting.