Living Wage

Living wage calculations, most commonly built on the Anker methodology used by the Global Living Wage Coalition and Fair Trade USA, start from the real cost of a decent life in a specific place — rent, groceries, healthcare, school fees — then add a small savings margin, typically around 10%, on top. That figure almost always lands well above the country's statutory minimum; Bangladesh raised its garment-sector minimum wage to roughly 12,500 taka a month in December 2023 after worker protests, while independent living-wage estimates for the same workers ran considerably higher.

This is the number that explains price gaps between two visually identical blanks — a Fair Trade Certified or Fair Wear Foundation factory paying toward a living-wage benchmark carries real labor cost that a minimum-wage facility doesn't, and that difference shows up on the invoice before a single shirt gets printed. We've had buyers push back on a certified blank's price until we walked them through exactly what that premium is funding.

If a client's brief specifically calls for living-wage sourcing, ask the supplier which methodology and benchmark they're using and for what country — the term has no single legal definition, so claims vary in rigor the same way sweatshop-free claims do.

Buyers often conflate it with minimum wage, assuming a factory that pays the legal minimum is automatically paying fairly. It isn't the same number — minimum wage is a legal floor set by government, while this benchmark is calculated from the actual cost of an adequate standard of living, and in most garment-exporting countries the two are far apart.