I spent Tuesday morning at Federal Hocking Middle School for Career Day. A student in one of the classes asked me how old I am and how much money I make. Journalism is all about truth and transparency, so I answered: I’m 58 and I currently make about $25,000 a year. His eyes grew wide. “That’s more than my mom makes,” he said.
MIT’s Living Wage Calculator for Athens County says that a single adult with one child working full time needs to earn over $69,000 a year to be self-sufficient. A family with two adults working full time and one child needs $78,000.
The current median household income in Athens County is $48,750.
And before you say, “Well, the college students keep that figure low”: Median household income in Federal Hocking Local School District was $35,734 in 2017. All five Athens County districts ranked in the bottom third of Ohio school districts for household income that year, and I don’t imagine things have changed significantly since then.
We all know that Athens County is poor. It’s the poorest in Ohio. In our reader survey last year, we asked you what you thought was the county’s most pressing challenge; “poverty” was by far the most frequent answer. We’re so notoriously poor that when WYNC’s On the Media did a series about poverty myths, they came to Athens County to see firsthand what poverty looks like.
It’s one thing to know these facts. It’s another to tell a child you make $25,000 a year and see his wonder at the concept of someone making one-third the county’s living wage. Not wonder at how low that figure is — wonder at the possibility that someone could make so much.
This has been an unusually busy week, and not only because the Independent was closed Monday for Presidents Day. Spending three hours talking to tweens about journalism didn’t seem like the best use of my time, but I’m glad I went. I may not have inspired anyone to become a journalist, but the reality check makes me a better one.
