What it costs to get by in Texas in 2026

Each year, the Texas Workforce Commission publishes the Self-Sufficient Wage for Texas, a county-by-county estimate of the income a working family needs to cover its basic costs without public or private assistance. The 2026 numbers are out, and they tell a fairly straightforward story: the cost of getting by in Texas continues to climb, driven mostly by healthcare.

What counts as a typical Texas family

The standard is built around what TWC defines as the typical Texas family. For 2026, that family is 3.29 people, made up of 1.69 adults and 1.60 children, based on the U.S. Census Bureau‘s 2024 American Community Survey one-year estimates. That’s slightly smaller than the 2025 typical family of 3.46 people (1.78 adults and 1.68 children). The smaller assumed family size pulls some county estimates down even as underlying costs rise.

The statewide number

A Texas family now needs an average of $74,614 a year, or $17.66 an hour, to be self-sufficient. That’s up from $72,561 (and $17.18 an hour) in 2025, an increase of about 2.83%.

The statewide figure is a population-weighted average. It tells one story about Texas as a whole. The county-level data tells a very different one.

A wide gap between Texas counties

One of the most striking things about the 2026 standard is how much variation there is across Texas. The county with the lowest self-sufficient wage is Calhoun County on the Gulf Coast, where a family needs $58,153 a year ($13.77 an hour) to get by. The county with the highest is Collin County in the Dallas metro, where a family needs $90,635 a year ($21.46 an hour).

That is a difference of more than $32,000 per year for the same typical family, depending entirely on which Texas county they live in. Put another way, the most expensive county in Texas is about 1.56 times more expensive than the least expensive.

The distribution skews toward the lower end. Of the 254 counties:

• 178 counties have an annual self-sufficient wage under $65,000
• 55 counties fall between $65,000 and $75,000
• 17 counties fall between $75,000 and $85,000
• 4 counties sit above $85,000 (Collin, Rockwall, Denton and Travis)

In other words, the median Texas county sits well below the statewide average, because the statewide number is pulled up by a small group of densely populated, high-cost metro counties. Most Texas counties, particularly rural ones, look much more affordable on paper. The challenge in those counties is usually not the cost of living but the availability of jobs that pay at or above the self-sufficient wage.

The least expensive counties in 2026 are concentrated in rural West Texas, the Hill Country, and along the Gulf Coast: Calhoun, Gonzales, Schleicher, Sutton and Coke. The most expensive are all in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin metros: Collin, Rockwall, Denton, Travis and Kaufman.

Most counties got more expensive

Of Texas’ 254 counties, 244 saw the self-sufficient wage rise and 10 saw it fall. The largest year-over-year increases were concentrated in fast-growing exurban counties: Ellis, Somervell, Gillespie, Erath, Hood, Rockwall, San Jacinto, Kaufman, Parker and Johnson, each up between 6% and 9%.

In the major metros:

• Dallas: $78,133 to $81,491 (+4.3%)
• Tarrant: $77,607 to $80,187 (+3.3%)
• Collin: $86,147 to $90,635 (+5.2%)
• Denton: $84,002 to $88,723 (+5.6%)
• Harris: $73,549 to $74,731 (+1.6%)
• Bexar: $72,139 to $73,329 (+1.7%)
• El Paso: $63,010 to $65,060 (+3.3%)
• Hidalgo: $60,894 to $63,680 (+4.6%)

The Austin metro is the exception. Travis County dropped 2.3%, Williamson fell 1.6%, and Hays fell 1.6%. The decline reflects the smaller assumed family size combined with updated housing and childcare inputs in the region. Travis County still ranks among the four most expensive counties in the state for a family, just not by as much as it did in 2025.

Healthcare led the cost increases

Prices for healthcare have become a top financial worry for Texas families and rightfully so. Healthcare was the fastest growing component in the 2026 standard, up 11.3% on average across counties. The average monthly healthcare cost for a Texas family rose from about $875 to $975.

Within that, the two pieces moved at very different speeds. Health insurance premiums rose about 7.5%, climbing from an average of $636 to $684 per month. Out-of-pocket spending grew much faster, jumping 21.5%, from $239 to $291 per month. That out-of-pocket increase is the single largest percentage change among any cost component in the standard, and it reflects a continued pattern of families absorbing more of the price of care directly even when they have coverage.

The combination of rising premiums and rising out-of-pocket costs has real implications for what working families need to earn just to stay financially stable.

With the creation of a new Select Committee on Health Care Affordability, the Texas Legislature has taken a step to produce policy recommendations that lower prices and increase access for families across the state.

Childcare is still one of the largest household costs

Childcare costs rose 4.7% in 2026, with the average monthly cost climbing from $788 to $824 per family. That increase is smaller than healthcare’s, but the absolute number remains striking: childcare is one of the single largest line items in the typical Texas family’s budget.

In many counties, average monthly childcare costs are comparable to housing. In a handful of counties, childcare is the single most expensive component of the standard. Because the typical Texas family in the 2026 standard includes 1.60 children, childcare costs scale directly with family composition, and they hit hardest in the years when parents are also early in their careers and earning the least.

The figures used here are county averages for the typical family. For families with infants or with more than two children, real-world childcare costs can run substantially higher.

Other components

Housing rose 3.7%, broadband and cell phone service rose 6.5%, and miscellaneous costs and other necessities each rose about 4%. The only component that fell was food, down 2.7%.

Why it matters

The Self-Sufficient Wage is one of the clearest pictures available of what working Texans actually need to earn. It accounts for what families actually spend money on, county by county, and is updated annually with current cost and population data.

The 2026 numbers point to three trends worth watching.

1. The cost of getting by in Texas keeps rising, even as some of the assumptions inside the model (like family size) shrink.
2. Healthcare has become a stand-out driver, with out-of-pocket costs rising more than 20% in a single year.
3. The gap between the lowest and highest cost counties remains wide, which means a “self-sufficient” wage in Texas is really hundreds of different numbers depending on where someone lives and works.

As Texas continues to grow, the gap between prevailing wages and the cost of basic needs, especially healthcare and childcare, is a useful benchmark for policymakers, employers and families navigating the state’s economy.

The Self-Sufficient Wage in higher education policy

The Self-Sufficient Wage concept is also increasingly embedded in Texas higher education policy, though with a different calculation methodology that focuses on individual experiences rather than the wages necessary to support a family.

In 2023, Texas tied 95% of community college formula funding to outcomes, including Credentials of Value completion, transfer to four-year institutions, and dual credit completion. Passed in 2025, SB 1786 added an individual self-sufficient wage floor to the Credential of Value definition, which differs from the family-based calculation above. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board set the individual self-sufficient wage at $30,000 per year in August 2025 based on TWC data.

That $30,000 threshold is based on the simple median of the 254 county-level Self-Sufficient Wages for an individual adult, rounded to the nearest thousand dollars. That means each county is weighted equally regardless of population. By contrast, the population-weighted median, which reflects where Texans actually live, is closer to $36,800 per year.

As of July 2025, roughly 27 million Texans, about 89% of the state’s population, lived in counties where the local self-sufficiency standard for an individual exceeded the $30,000 benchmark. The gap between the two figures illustrates how heavily Texas’ population is concentrated in a relatively small number of larger, higher-cost metro counties. Because of that difference, Texas 2036 continues to support a higher benchmark and an eventual move toward regional standards so the threshold better reflects what working Texans actually need to earn.

Source: Texas Workforce Commission, LMI Department. Methodology developed by the Center for Women’s Welfare, University of Washington School of Social Work. Population data from the U.S. Census Bureau.