the.com/living wage

means A living wage is the amount of pay a worker actually needs to afford basic necessities—food, housing, utilities, transport—in the place they live, as opposed to a legally set minimum that may fall short of that.

from The phrase surfaces in English in the 19th century, tied to labor and social reform movements arguing that wages should be judged against the real cost of living rather than fixed by market forces or law alone. It gained institutional traction through 20th-century campaigns and research groups (and later formal 'living wage' calculations and certifications) that tried to price out, region by region, what survival with dignity actually costs — explicitly framed against the 'minimum wage,' which only promises what legislation was willing to guarantee.