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Concept

Real hourly wage

The real hourly wage is your pay minus everything the job costs you, commuting, work clothes, lunches, decompression, divided by your working hours plus the hours those costs consume. It is the true price of an hour of your life, and it is almost always lower than your contract.

Robin and Dominguez ask for an honest calculation most people have never done. Start with monthly take-home pay. Subtract the costs that exist only because of the job: transport, the clothes you would not otherwise buy, the coffees and lunches, the evenings spent recovering in front of a screen, the holiday taken to escape it. Then add the hours those things take, the commute, the recovery, to the hours actually worked. Divide the smaller number by the larger. The result is the rate at which you are really selling your life, and it is the number that makes the life-energy reframing bite: every purchase is now a number of hours at that rate. The figure is also useful in the other direction. A job that pays less on paper but costs less in hours and recovery may have the higher real wage, and a raise that comes with a longer commute may be a cut.

A real-life example

Emre in Kadıköy is paid the equivalent of thirty thousand a month and thinks of himself as earning 170 an hour. He adds the ninety-minute commute each way, the coworking fee, the takeaway lunches and two drained evenings a week. His real hourly wage is 98. A remote job paying twenty-six thousand with no commute, when he runs the same calculation, comes out higher.

How to use it

  1. 1List every cost that exists only because of the job, in money and in hours, including recovery time.
  2. 2Divide adjusted pay by adjusted hours and write the number on the first page of your notes.
  3. 3Use the same calculation when comparing job offers; the contract number is not the real one.