Cost of living in United States

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2024 annual means (series CXU*LB0101M and CXU*LB0502M via the BLS public API) ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Dec 31, 2024

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024, all consumer units: average annual expenditures $78,535 across an average 2.4 persons. Removing shelter ($16,317, the rent-equivalent line), personal insurance and pensions ($9,797, which is saving rather than consumption) and cash contributions ($2,292, which are transfers) leaves $50,129 of consumption. Divided by 2.4 people and by 12 months = $1,740.59 per person per month.

Notes

Per-capita basis, to match how Italy, Spain, Czechia, Austria and France are computed in this dataset. The BLS also publishes the real one-person consumer unit, which is what a solo mover actually faces: $48,794 a year, or $29,359 after removing the same three lines — about $2,447 a month excluding rent, 41% above the per-capita figure because a person living alone has no household economies of scale. Read $1,741 as the comparable cross-country number and $2,447 as the realistic personal one. Both include US health spending, which is why every line involving healthcare runs far above the European entries.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — FY2026 Fair Market Rents (county file), with the revisions of 21 April 2026 (91 FR, doc 2026-07741) ↗

Official source

Data as of

May 21, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Population-weighted mean of the FY2026 one-bedroom Fair Market Rent across all 4,730 county records carrying a 2023 population (334.8 million people), after substituting the seven areas revised by HUD on 21 April 2026 — of which Los Angeles is the only large one, its 1BR rising from $2,085 to $2,328. Unweighted, the median county 1BR FMR is $985; the weighting to where people actually live raises it to $1,443.54.

Notes

A Fair Market Rent is the 40th-percentile gross rent for a standard-quality unit, including tenant-paid utilities, and it is set for a whole metro or county rather than a central district — so this is not directly comparable with the centre-of-city asking rents used for the European countries here, and it sits below what a newcomer would pay to live centrally. The three cities in this dataset are all far above it: $2,655 in the New York metro, $2,328 in Los Angeles, $2,015 in Washington.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — 2026 Marketplace Open Enrollment Period State-Level Public Use File, national total row ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Jan 15, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

CMS reports an average monthly premium of $741 before advance premium tax credits across the 23,130,860 people who selected a plan for 2026 through HealthCare.gov and the state exchanges; ×12 = $8,892 a year. Average premium after tax credits is $178 a month.

Notes

Basis differs from the other countries here and the difference matters. This is an enrollee-weighted average across all ages and all metal levels, not a quote for a healthy 35-year-old: the marketplace risk pool skews old (41% of enrollees are 45 or over), and the Affordable Care Act lets insurers charge the oldest adults up to three times the youngest, so a 35-year-old pays meaningfully less than $741 a month. No age adjustment was applied because CMS's default uniform age-rating curve was not retrievable at the verification date. Two further caveats: most enrollees do not pay the sticker price — premium tax credits cut the average to $178 a month — and this is individual-market insurance with deductibles and coinsurance on top, not the comprehensive low-deductible cover the other entries quote. Even discounted for all of that, US health cover is the most expensive in this dataset by a wide margin, and it is the single largest fixed cost a freelancer moving to the United States takes on.