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Comment by cstrahan | Hacker News Reader

Check out https://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/

Plug in $12,000 as the annual income, and that'll tell you that 24% of U.S. workers made that or less in 2014.

Looks like the number of full time U.S. workers in 2014 was 118.72 million: https://www.statista.com/statistics/192361/unadjusted-monthl...

That works out to be 28 million U.S. workers making <= $1,000 per month. Considering that's excluding part time workers, that should be make the calculation fairly conservative.

The specific numbers have changed in 6 years, but I don't find it all that unreasonable to suspect that there are many millions of U.S. citizens making less than $1,000 per month.

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Do you have access to a formatted source of the data that was used to make the percentile calculator ? They claim it is based off the 2014 American Community Survey's Public Use Microdata Sample, but clicking on the provided link takes you to a directory with hundreds of zip folders.

Also the last link to "howmuch.net" states that their numbers include any wage earners whatsoever.

"There is one important caveat to keep in mind when thinking about our dataset. The SSA numbers include any wage earners whatsoever, even part-time workers like students and teenagers. If the worker reports his or her income to the IRS on a W2 form, he or she is included in these stats."

Why single out part timers, students and teenagers? How does any of that matter when talking about Americans earning less than $1000/mo? "These Americans make less than that, but let's not count them"???

Teenagers are supposed to have a support net, and be in school. It is not abnormal for them to have a living wage.

The same is true for students, albeit in a lesser form. Nevertheless, students will rarely have full time, qualified jobs. They need the time to go to class, and have no qualifications or experience.

The fact that part timers are discounted, is because if you work 50% then it is to be expected that your monthly salary is half that of full time employment. Sure, some people may want to work more but cannot, but for many it is a choice that enables them to do something else. Raising kids for example.

Were not counting infants or dead people neither. Because it would not make sense. The point is to understand the wage situation of people when their wages are not influenced by something else, so that we can compare.

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